Return
by DagaYemar
Summary: Can a being that isn't truly alive actually die? Turns out no, no it can't. Larxene wakes up after her fight with Sora, hurt, confused, and very angry! What will she find has become of the Organization while she's been gone? Please review!
1. XII

_Author's note - I should explain a little about this story first. I was talking with my friends one day about the Kingdom Hearts games, as one of them had just played them for the first time, and I mentioned that all the Organization members died surrounded by their own element. Marluxia in a swirl of petals, Demyx in a fountain of water, etcetera. One of my friends then said, "Yeah, all but Larxene. She just vanished." After mulling it over for a bit, we popped in Chain of Memories to check. Lo and behold, there was not a single bolt of lightning as she died. Speculations on why her death was different led to wondering if she died at all, which lead to more questions, and ultimately to this story._

_Enough back story, read on!_

* * *

XII

Darkness. Endless darkness. Lightless. Soundless. Scentless. Motionless.

Well, mostly.

A small lump of darkness shuddered and twitched. First one, then a second glowing orb popped open. The lantern-like eyes glanced from side to side quickly, and then locked straight ahead again. The small creature took a hesitant step forward, then another, and then it seemed to melt into a flat outline. The thin shadow flitted across the distance quickly and slowly rose back into its original shape. It shuffled its feet nervously and reached a hand slowly forward.

The hand caressed over the tip of the boot, ready to dart back if the shoe so much as fell over. Encouraged by the lack of response, the shadow crawled on top of the leg and patted it down. Its search led it further up, its questing hands hindered by the unyielding, black coat. It paused as it found a wicked tear across the coat's chest, sensing the power leaking out from the opening. But a more tantalizing source proved too tempting and it continued up to the collar.

The shadow's lantern eyes roved over the face, the only uncovered part it could find. It gave the impression of considering the pale skin, the pink lips, and the one open, sea-green eye. It reached out to touch one of the long strands of bright yellow hair, but paused at the last second and instead fell upon a pale cheek.

Its expressionless face gave a good try at expressing hunger, surprise, and then horror in the span of a few seconds. It tried to remove its hand but was held fast. A small pop of static curved over its arm and the shadow suddenly started to melt. It came apart in a flood of liquid shade, pouring over the pale skin and pooling around the bright yellow hair. The pool of blackness bubbled for a second and then settled, motionless save for a small ripple. Like a sponge, the puddle was slowly drawn inward towards the head, quickly disappearing entirely.

Soon, the darkness had returned to its original state. Endless. Lightless. Soundless. Scentless. Motionless.

Well, mostly.

For now there was the soft sound of breathing…

***

_Where… am I?_

_I can't see anything. Why does it hurt to breathe? I can't move. How long have I been here? I can't get up. What happening to me? I can't roll over. How did I get here? I can't-_

_Wait._

_Stop panicking. It's pathetic._

_OK… you can think through this. You've been through much worse… haven't you? Why does it hurt to think? Ignore it. Grit your teeth… oh. Right, can't move. Never mind, just concentrate. You have to… you have… you... you? Who's you?_

_Who am I?_

***

Time might have passed.

The endless, unchanging darkness made it hard to tell, but if time did pass, then a lot of it did. Or maybe no time passed and the shadow had only just died. The endless darkness didn't care. The face, the boot, the coat, the sea green eye, all of that, didn't care. The shadow couldn't care anymore. But something was happening, time or no time.

For while the darkness was still endless and lightless, scentless and motionless, it wasn't soundless anymore. A sound, small at first, was slowly growing. And now the darkness wasn't motionless anymore, either. High above, a dot had appeared, growing in size and shape. If a point of reference had been available, an onlooker would have noted that the shape was falling. But there was nothing to get a reference from, and who was there to look?

"aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA_AAAAAAAAAAAAAA__**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-**_"

The shape, much larger now, barreled just passed where the shadow had died and kept going. The shape was shrouded in shadowy forms, forms that clutched and scrambled as the shape fell. Several shapes trailed after it, trying to catch up to the speeding shape as it receded into the depths.

"_**-AAAAAAAAAAA**__AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa…"

Soon the loud shape was gone, but a few of the smaller shapes trailing it remained. One paused in its pursuit and looked to the side. It sensed a closer meal, not as strong as the first but not moving as fast. This shadow was much larger than the last and only hesitated a little as it ran over. It brushed past the long locks of yellow hair and grabbed the head in both hands. There was a sizzle, a pop, and a flash of light, and the shadow died. It melted quickly and just as quickly was gone.

The darkness settled. Endless. Lightless. Scentless.

But it wasn't soundless. The breathing had steadied. The form's chest rose and fell gently, and the gash didn't seem as large anymore.

And it wasn't motionless. The form's fingers twitched and its head rocked slightly to the side.

***

_Alright, I can at least move that finger. It's a start. Now to see if I can open my right eye. Or at least close my left. It can't see anything anyway… I hope I'm not blind…_

_What happened to me?_

_I remember… white? White walls. Lots of them. Everything was white… except… there were people. People in black. Was I one of them? I think I was…_

_And there was… a girl… but was she in black or white? I think it was white…_

_And a boy! The boy in red! Yes… he was… was… Sola. No… Sore… Sora… Soba… wait, it was Sora! And there was… a talking duck…_

_Am I making all this up?_

_Why is it so hard to think! Wait… did I just shake my head? I wonder… nope, still can't get up. Sigh… I'm bored. And I think I'm hungry._

_Strange… feels like I've been hungry for a long time. I wonder why I hadn't noticed before._

***

The darkness was getting agitated. It was supposed to be soundless, but the form was breathing. It was supposed to be motionless, but the form was shifting. It was supposed to be scentless, but something was starting to fill the air. It was barely noticeable right now, but…

A shadow coalesced and stood up. This one was larger than the previous two and more streamlined. Its arms and hands were longer, its chest was thinner, and its antennae were longer. It looked around curiously for the source of the slight scent and spotted the form.

There was no hesitation in its movements as it eagerly approached. But as it reached out to grasp the form a small ark of electricity reached out from the form and landed on its arm. The neoshadow jerked in pain, but was stronger than either of its predecessors and didn't immediately die. It turned and started back the way it came, but paused and looked back. The scent was soft but deep, promising endless reaches of darkness, and the form appeared so weak…

The neoshadow started back and was hit by a second jolt. It paused again and temptation won out again. It took two more jolts before the creature died and melted away. This time the pool of darkness was drawn in greedily. This time the body seemed to turn in towards the flow. This time the wound definitely was smaller.

This time the darkness wasn't motionless for long. Other shadows were already starting to form.

***

_Axel. Red hair, had something to do with heat. And a jerk, can't forget that. He was there. And another in black. Big, didn't talk much… what was his name? It'll come to me. Then there was… number eleven… smelled of… flowers?_

_Damn, I lost it._

_There was a fight, or several fights, and I was in some of them. The boy in red, and the boy in yellow… Riku? Yes, Riku. Or was it him? For some reason I think it both was him and wasn't him. It has to be one or the other, right?_

_Why can't I remember my name?_

_Never mind, focus. I fought the boy in red, Sora, and he had… some kind of weapon. A sword? A key? Why is this so hard?!?_

_I had knives and… lightning? Did I have lightning? But he hit me… hurt me… and I tried to get away. I remember trying to open a dark corridor and… wait, what's a dark corridor? Is that where I am? It IS dark…_

_Yes, I tried to escape after he cut me and I collapsed. Have I been here this whole time? Why didn't anyone come to find me? That man… Axel… and Marluxia! That's the flower guy._

_Almost there…_

***

The darkness wasn't lightless anymore, either. Lightning was crackling along the length of the body, curling and leaping in strange patterns. It was all that was keeping the swarm of shadowy figures surrounding the body from rushing in. Not that some didn't try. The shadows acted primarily on instinct and while instinct told most of the larger ones to stay back, the smaller ones couldn't deny their hunger.

So they leapt and they died. Their forms melted and were sucked in, fueling more lightning. Soon the lightning was arcing away from the body, striking those that would stay back and killing them instantly. Chaos ruled, the shadows scrambling everywhere as their fear of the lightning and their hunger for darkness fought within them.

And the body continued to feed, but something was missing. The more it ate, the more it seemed to need. It was storing power, but there wasn't anything to spark it. The lightning arced, the shadows died, and the body grew healthier by the minute. But something was missing.

Out in the darkness, another form was approaching. This area was well outside its usual patrol, but it had sensed a strange gathering of shadows and was curious. Its metallic body swayed as it floated through the air, the single propeller on its base providing not-quite-perfect lift. It readied the lasers on its arms just in case the shadows proved hostile.

The light from the arcing lightning ahead glinted off its body, momentarily illuminating the heart shaped symbol etched on its chest.

***

_Axel, Marluxia, Zexion, Vexen, and Lexaeus. They were with me in that castle. Castle Oblivion? Sounds about right. And we were invaded by the keyblade master. Sora had already killed Vexen… or was it Axel who did that? Anyway, I went to fight him and he almost killed me. He DID kill me, there was no way I could have survived a wound like that._

_Am I dead?_

_NO! There's no way I'm dead! I can't die like that!_

_Besides, I'm a nobody. If I died, nothing would be left. Right?_

_Bah, Vexen was the scientist. If I can think, then I'm not dead yet. I'll ask Vexen later about it. But Vexen's dead. But the others aren't. Are they?_

_Did they leave me here? Was I abandoned? Who am I? Who am I!?!_

_L… La… Lar…_

***

"Larxene."

The word, though spoken softly, seemed to echo about the area. All eyes turned to watch as the form, the body, the _woman_, rose slowly to her feet. She looked down as the last of the Guardian heartless faded away and looked back up to regard those left around her. She raised her arms and the lightning curled around them, caressing her like a pet welcoming its master home. The woman flexed her fingers and suddenly her hands were full of daggers. The lightning leapt wildly in anticipation.

Around her, the heartless turned to each other in confusion. One of them took a hesitant step forward.

The woman spun, flinging her daggers in every direction. The lightning followed in their wake, blasting through the shadowy forms like a hot knife through paper. The shadows fled; those who couldn't, died. Soon, the woman stood alone in the darkness that wasn't quite so lightless, soundless, scentless, or motionless anymore.

An evil smile crept onto Larxene's face. "Someone is going to pay."


	2. XI

XI

When Larxene woke up for the second time, she was on her back. She stared up at the swirling blackness in confusion, trying to sort through the fog in her head. It didn't help that the back of her skull was throbbing like she had slammed it into a brick wall. Or like it had connected with the ground when she collapsed. Probably from exhaustion.

_Perhaps I shouldn't have used that much juice so soon after coming to, _she thought. She quickly inventoried her various aches. Her hair didn't feel wet, so she probably hadn't broken her skull in the fall. Her arms and legs were numb, but the feeling was slowly returning to them. She felt a dull ache from the area around her stomach. Her heart was beating rapidly and her breathing was a bit labored, but…

_Wait... my heart?_

All her pains forgotten, she slapped her hand to her chest and felt for her pulse. For a few desperate seconds she couldn't feel anything, but then she moved her hand a little to the side and there it was. It was faint and pulsed at a steady beat, supplying her body with the minimum amount of blood needed. Like always.

She held her hand against it for thirty seconds just to be sure, and then dropped her arm back to the ground. _Slow, steady, and unresponsive. Nothing's changed. But for a second there… I could have sworn it reacted…_

"Not important right now." She said aloud, mostly just to hear the sound of her voice. "Getting out of here comes first. Once I figure out where here is." Slowly, she pulled herself up until she was sitting. Crossing her legs proved a little difficult, but she managed it. She looked around at the darkness as if she could find something familiar in it.

"OK, that blast sent the heartless scurrying to their holes, so I've got some time to try and figure this out before they get back. Let's see… the last thing I remember was going toe-to-toe with the keyblade brat. I clearly had the upper hand, but somehow he got close enough to…"

She pressed her hand to the wicked tear in her cloak and felt an odd ridge. She looked down and noticed for the first time that she had a large scar running diagonally across her stomach. Her rage almost consumed her then, startling her with its unexpected intensity, but she reined it in. For later.

"After he cut me," she continued through clenched teeth, "I started to disappear. I tried to open a dark corridor back up to the viewing room, but I couldn't complete the tunnel. There wasn't an exit and I wandered in the darkness until I finally fell unconscious. But the question of the day is: why didn't I die?"

She mulled over that question until her legs started to go numb again, then stretched and stood up. "Well, I'm not going to get any answers here."

She held her palm out and mentally commanded her darkness to open a corridor. The world went white and Larxene found herself on her knees, clutching at her splitting head. Her other hand was pressed against her scar, which was burning like acid. Slowly, _slowly,_ the pain ebbed away, leaving Larxene gasping.

"Alright… that was odd." She muttered. She reached up and pushed one of her antennae that had fallen over her eye back into place, and then raised her hand again.

She was ready for the pain this time, but even still it almost drove her to her knees. She clamped her teeth down on her lip hard enough to taste blood and fought against it. Finally, a pool of darkness deeper than that around it welled up into an elongated sphere slightly over six feet tall. Larxene grinned in triumph but at first couldn't move, nearly doubled over at the waist. Then she straightened and, before she could give it a second thought, stepped into the corridor.

_cold gone scared darkness crushing despair everything's missing help me where's nothing empty frozen nobody they're all gone falling vanishing DYING_

Larxene left the dark corridor in a blind stumble, arms pin wheeling as she tripped over her feet. She fell to her knees hard and retched, saving herself the indignity of vomiting only because her stomach was empty. She was shivering uncontrollably, and it took a concerted effort of will to stop herself from crying like a newborn.

After a while she got control of herself and rose shakily to her feet. _What was that? That's certainly never happened before._ Just to be sure, she put a hand to her chest again and felt for her pulse. _Damn, it's still not racing. Did I just imagine it earlier…_

She shook her head and looked around. She was standing in the entrance hall to Castle Oblivion. Its white walls were quite jarring to her eyes after the darkness, but after the ordeal she just went though she barely paid it any attention.

She instinctively raised a hand to create a corridor that would take her to her rooms on the top floor, but paused. "Hrmm… until I know what's going on, I'd better lay off the special effects." She sighed and turned toward the first set of stairs.

* * *

Thirteen floors later, she wondered what in the _world_ she had been thinking, deciding to walk up. The only reason she had stopped cursing the steps, the walls, the whole damn castle, was because she had run out of breath two floors ago.

"Even if we can… jump anywhere… at a thought…" she huffed, "why couldn't we… have put in… a damn _elevator!_"

Deciding that she would rather just fall asleep for the next month, Larxene shuffled passed the viewing room and walked down the hall to her room. She wearily pushed the door open with her shoulder and was about to collapse onto her bed when she noticed it was missing. She stared uncomprehendingly at the spot where it had been for a minute, then slowly turned her head to look around. Her dresser was missing, as was the table where she kept her few books. Her closet hung open and she could see that it had been cleared out too.

Her anger returned and she let it come. _Someone has been in my ROOM!_

Riding on the wave of her fury, her exhaustion forgotten, she burst back into the hallway and ran to the viewing room. She pulled up short at the door, not quite believing what she was seeing. The room was as empty as hers had been. The giant crystal ball that had dominated the center was gone and there weren't even grooves in the floor to show it had been moved. The pillars were still there but the vases were gone, as were the pictures that had hung at random parts along the wall. She had never really understood those, the pictures were blank, and what kind of flowers had pure white stems and petals? But at least they were something to break the monotony of the endlessly blank walls and now they weren't there.

A quick search of the floor showed the same thing had happened everywhere. Someone, at some point, had emptied the entire place of anything that had belonged to them._ But why? Did they abandon the castle? It doesn't look like anyone else has taken up residence. What would have caused them to give up this place?_

_How long have I been gone?_

With these thoughts swirling through her head, she found herself in Marluxia's room. Bright sunlight pouring in through a large window along one wall bathed her face warmly, but otherwise the room was as stark as her own. "We were going to take them all." She said to the room. "Where're your plans now? Did they find out about our plans and shut you and everyone else here down? And why am I standing alone in an empty room, asking questions I don't know the answer to?"

She clenched her fists and spun around angrily. But as she was about to leave, she froze and turned back to the window. Something had been nagging at her and she just realized what. It was always dark outside the castle, as it was built on the edge of a nearly bottomless pit of darkness. So where was the light coming from?

She stepped up to the window and tried to peer through it, but she couldn't make anything out from the glare. So she flipped the lock, lifted the pane, and stuck her head out.

Whatever she was expecting, this wasn't it. The window didn't open to the outside; rather it led to a huge room filled with what appeared to be a jungle. Various trees and ferns were spread haphazardly everywhere, growing out of a layer of soil spread across the floor. Vines crept up the walls all the way to the ceiling, which was covered by an enormous heat lamp which was providing the light. Several clear paths cut through the foliage, leading further into the room.

_No,_ she thought,_ on second thought, this is exactly what I'd expect Marluxia to have. The real question is: how did this remain secret?_

The answer came to her as she lowered herself through the window into the room. Marluxia was in charge of Castle Oblivion, therefore he was the only one who knew all its secrets. Clearly, he had selected his bedroom because this room was adjacent to it and had written this place off the buildings plans.

"A lot of work for a garden." She mused, wandering down a random path. A sudden movement ahead caught her attention and she slowed, making sure not to step on any branches or leaves as she made her way forward. Up ahead the path widened into a clearing about a dozen feet wide at the exact center of the room. What she saw as she stepping into the clearing shocked her more than anything else in the room had.

An enormous plant was growing out of the center of the clearing. Its stem was supported by dozens of roots, entwining above the ground before digging into the dirt. The stem was bent almost double under the weight of a gigantic pod, nearly four feet long, which hung down like some overripe fruit. But what had really ground her to a halt was a familiar pink-haired figure, humming to himself as he watered the plant with a large pail.

"Who is… Larxene? Is that really you?" Marluxia asked, turning and dropping the pail.

Though she was one of the newest members of the Organization, no one else was her equal in speed. Before Marluxia even finished her name she had covered the distance between them, flicking her wrists and summoning up her daggers. By the end of his second question, she had already stabbed him three times in the chest and was going for a fourth.

"You bastard!" she screamed, slamming a bolt of lightning home with her latest strike. The blow drove him back hard against the huge plant, which swayed precariously. Marluxia pressed his hands to the dagger embedded in his throat, but he was already coming apart. In a swirl of petals he collapsed upon himself, spilling not a single swirl of darkness as he did so. This fact pierced Larxene's fury as she stared hard at the pile of flower petals.

"It was a clone." she realized. "I could have gotten my answers, but I killed it. And it wasn't even HIM!"

She fumed for a few seconds, and then summoned a fistful of daggers. The first shattered the heat lamp and rained shards of glass around her. The second sent the water pail sailing through the air, a sizzling hole in its side. Her third, fourth, and fifth slammed into the giant plant, severing its stem and sending the pod crashing to the ground.

As the pod hit the floor, it split open and a figure flopped out of it. "No! What happened? It's too soon!" the figure yelped. Larxene looked down on him in shock, her remaining daggers forgotten.

There were several things different about this Marluxia. To begin with, he was wearing only a plain, full body shift that seemed to be made from some kind of plant-like fabric. And his shoulder length hair was wet and pressed against his skin; she had never seen his hair anything other than perfectly groomed. Otherwise he was exactly like she remembered him.

Oh, and he was only about three feet tall. That was also different.


	3. VI

VI

"I don't understand." Marluxia spat, wiping a combination of pollen and sap off his face. "The pod wasn't supposed to bloom this soon. Why did I…"

He finally got the last of the sap out of his eyes and looked up to see Larxene bending over him, staring at him intently. "How are you alive?" she asked in a small voice.

"How am I alive? How are you alive? I saw the keybearer strike you down. You faded into darkness, just like the rest of us." He spied the pile of petals at the base of the plant and sighed. "I suppose you're the one who did this."

Larxene's lip was twitching oddly and her breath seemed to be hitching. She slowly reached out a hand to touch his shoulder. "You're… so… small…"

"I'm what?" Marluxia asked irritably, swatting her hand out of the way. Then he froze, noticing how much larger her hand was next to his. Slowly, he looked down at himself and his eyes almost fell out of his sockets.

"I'm tiny!" he shouted, showing more emotion than Larxene had ever seen him express. "This is… this is terrible! My growth has been stunted! Do you realize what you've done to me? I won't be able to create another pod until… alright, cut it out. No, really… you've had your fun… stop it!"

Larxene couldn't hear him. She was laughing too hard.

"I am under a bit of stress right now and I will not be mocked, even by you!" Marluxia said, raising his hand above his head. A single petal floated into the center of his palm and exploded outward in an eddy of power. When the light cleared he was holding his scythe in his outstretched hand. His full sized, six foot long, not including the blade, scythe. Which he clearly wasn't expecting to have retained its original size.

"Uwaaa!" he shouted, the unexpected weight overbalancing him and spilling him onto the lawn. Larxene also fell over, laughing all the harder and clutching her sides.

Marluxia slowly climbed to his feet with as much dignity as he could manage, using his scythe as a staff. "Do you think you could be serious for a second? It's not like you really feel any humor at this."

That finally pierced through her mirth and she calmed down, her thoughts quickly turning pensive. It had been funny, and stealing another glance at Marluxia testing the balance of his weapon nearly set off another bout of giggles, but she had lost herself in laughing. That had certainly never happened before.

"Heh, guess I got carried away." She said, rising to a sitting position. "But you can hardly blame me when you look like that."

Marluxia shot her an annoyed glare and gave his weapon a practice swing. Soon he was slicing it through the air with his previous expertise, though he needed both hands to do so now. He dismissed his weapon with a thought and turned to regard the remains of the plant.

"Well, judging from the _floritica's_ size and color, it was still nine months away from maturity. That means I was in it for a little over a year." He turned around and faced her with his hands on his hips. "Could you tell me what's been happening since the keyblade bearer attacked?"

"Don't know. I only just woke up myself." Larxene replied, smirking. It was just so hard to take him seriously like that, but she steeled herself and made the attempt.

Marluxia sighed. "Then we're in the dark. Come on, it looks like we both need new robes, and I'm sure my clone would have set some nearby for me."

They soon found a trio of spare cloaks beneath a nearby fern. Larxene snatched up the one on top and shucked out of her ruined one. "So, what was the deal with that thing you were in?" she asked, shaking out the sleeves.

"You didn't think that the only part of a flower I could control were the petals, did you?" he returned, staring critically at the robe in his hands. With another sigh he summoned his scythe again, making sure to materialize it with the shaft resting mostly across the ground. He grasped in just below the blade and started to carefully slice into the waistband.

"I suppose you weren't around to see the end of our little drama." he continued, focusing on his work as he spoke. "Shortly after you fell, Axel challenged me to a duel. He was even holding his own for a while before Sora interrupted. I convinced the two of them to fight each other and sat back to watch the sparks fly. Sora proved the stronger."

"Aw, I'm not going to get to pay that traitor back for turning on us?" Larxene pouted.

"Not unless he can perform a resurrection act like us." Marluxia joked dryly. "After he fell I sent a clone to engage Sora and estimate his strength. He dispatched it with ease and I separated him from his allies before stepping in to finish him myself. But the keyblade proved… unpredictable."

"Don't tell me you lost too." Larxene promped, zipping up her new cloak. _Hmm, a little loose at the waist…_

Marluxia nodded and held up the sleeves so he could cut them even. "I thought I had the perfect battle plan to counter his style, but he dealt me the fatal blow first. In desperation I blinded him with a whirlwind of petals and, while he couldn't see me, crafted dozens of clones out of the storm. I singled one out to act as myself and fused all but one of the remainder with the first. I tried to shape it like the reports of what the Superior's heartless looked like at its end to lend it more credulous. Then I and my last clone made our escape as the keybearer was suitably engaged.

"Of course, the fatal blow had already been struck, and I soon collapsed after making it here. Using the last of my power I planted the _floritica_ seed in my chest and merged my consciousness to it. The clone, I left with instructions to keep the plant growing until my new form could mature in it."

He finished his trimming and slipped the cloak over his shoulders. Even though he had cut it to the correct length perfectly, it was still apparent that it was just half a cloak and looked suitably ridiculous. "Now that you know how I made it out, are you going to tell me how you survived?"

Larxene picked up the scraps from Marluxia's cloak and started slicing a long strip with one of her knives. "Don't have a clue, really. But in my opinion, if my will was strong enough for me to come back after my first death, why should my second death be any different?" She finished cutting off the strip and wrapped it around her waist, tying the makeshift belt tight.

Marluxia chuckled. "Suppose I'm not one to argue with that logic, though I suspect it's a bit more complicated than that. But we should get a more accurate assessment of the latest events."

He snapped his fingers and waited for a dusk to answer his summons. Nothing happened, and he stared curiously at his fingers. He snapped his fingers a couple more times, to the same result.

"Strange." he muttered, and then turned to the pile of petals at the base of the flower. He concentrated on then for a minute, but aside from a half-hearted swirl of petals nothing happened. "And I can't make any clones either… looks like more than my form has been stunted."

"Let me try." Larxene snapped her fingers, but could immediately tell that nothing would come of it. The sound didn't have the slightly hollow echo, as if it were also echoing down a silent tunnel none of them could see.

Marluxia, meanwhile, had tried and succeeded in creating a dark corridor. "Well, at least I can still make these. We had best find out what's happened as soon as possible."

"Where are you heading?" Larxene asked, eyes the portal warily. Unconsciously, her hand snuck to her stomach.

"The basement." Marluxia answered. "Before we venture forth into the worlds I want to know why none of the other guests in my castle intervened when we were invaded." And he disappeared into the swirling dark.

Larxene wavered on the edge of uncertainty for a moment, but only a moment. She quickly stepped up to the corridor before it could close and stepped through. The chilling confusion fell upon her, but this time she knew what to expect and fought back. The darkness of the corridor seemed to be trying to rip into her and memories from her flight before she collapsed threatened to overwhelm her. But she managed to keep the images at bay and the darkness proved incapable of overcoming her undamaged cloak.

She kept her feet with minimal effort as she left the corridor, though she did have her head in her hands. She would have kept walking forward with her head down if she hadn't heard Marluxia breathe in sharply in surprise.

"What is this?" he asked.

Larxene lifted her eyes from her hands and froze. They had appeared not in the basement's council room but along the wall in the bottom floor's hallway. The hidden doorway to the council room was just behind them and she could feel the seal around the room that had directed the corridor to open out here. But she couldn't tear her eyes away from the gaping hole in the room not three feet away from where they were standing. Through the hole, she could see the swirling darkness of the bottomless pit beneath the castle.

Marluxia stepped over to the edge and looked up. "The hole continued up though the ceiling. Appears to go all the way to the fourth or fifth basement level. I wonder what caused it?"

"If the corridor had been redirected a few feet over…" Larxene whispered, a soft shudder running through her. Something in the pit called out to her, something familiar, but she shook the thought away.

"Either way, this is not what we came down here for." Marluxia walked up to the door and easily dispelled the barrier around it. He pulled the hidden switch and the two of them entered through the small opening that appeared. The room inside was as dim as ever and was also devoid of its furniture. Larxene was about to ask what they were looking for when something moved in the gloom on the other side of the room, hesitantly crossing the distance between them.

"You're… you're real, aren't you?" Zexion asked softly, as if the sound of his voice would scare them off. "You are! Oh thank gods, you're really there!"


	4. II

II

Larxene had a fistful on knives cocked to throw in a heartbeat, but Marluxia caught her sleeve. "Let's not murder everyone capable of answering our questions." he chastised, stepping between her and Zexion. "I am surprised to see you still here. I assumed…"

He didn't get any farther, as Zexion covered the last few feet between them in a rush. He brought his hands out as if to grasp Marluxia by the head, but hesitated at the last second. He pulled his hands back and visibly tried to collect himself, but his fingers gave him away. They were flicking with a nervous energy and there was a weird glint in his eyes as he looked at them. It was a wild look that jarred with Larxene's memories of the calm, scheming boy she remembered him as.

"You sure I shouldn't?" Larxene asked half-jokingly, holding up her knives. "Looks like he might need a shock or three."

"It's just… you're dead." Zexion said softly. "I know you're dead. I remember… but my memory's… not what it used to be. Are you there? The illusions have played tricks on me before…"

"What are you talking about?" Marluxia asked, stepping back so that there was a safe distance between them. "You are the master of illusions. How could your own element be playing tricks on you?"

"Master, HA!" Zexion shouted, then flinched and immediately looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so loudly. "I can control them when I concentrate, but if I lose focus for one second they go off and do what they want. Today is a good day, a good day, it's so _nice_ to be talking to someone again…"

"Look, pipsqueak," Larxene interrupted. "We didn't ask for the details of your daily life. We need to know what happened in the past year. Are you listening to me?"

Larxene shot her hand out to grab him by the collar, but her hand slipped through his coat and into his neck without any resistance. A glowing blue line outlined where her hand disappeared into him. "By Kingdom Hearts!" she cried, pulling her hand back and rubbing it. The part of his neck where her hand had entered wavered a little before settling down. Zexion hardly seemed to notice.

"What happened to you?" Marluxia asked, looking more curious than concerned.

"It was all that doll." Zexion muttered, shuffling his feet and turning away from them. "He absorbed me, ate the darkness _right out of me_, until there was nothing left. I was conscious through it all, unable to act as I was trapped within that shell of a being. I was a part of the doll as it fought and died, and as all my stolen darkness was released from it I thought I was free at last."

Suddenly, he spun and stepped right up into their faces. "But I wasn't! My body was gone, disposed of by that puppet when it was done with me! My mind and power floated aimlessly for months before collecting here!"

Zexion resumed his pacing, his fingers twitching over his clamped hands. "By the time I could pull myself together, everyone was gone. It's just been me and the remains of my powers. And when I'm not paying attention… the illusions get out…"

"Interesting." Marluxia mused. "He's just a shadow of a nobody, his personality and mind preserved as one of his own illusions."

"What's left of his mind, you mean." Larxene chuckled. She was poking Zexion about the head and shoulders with her finger and watching his skin ripple. Zexion flinched whenever her finger disturbed his image. "Well, he's not much use to us if he's been shut in here the whole time."

"Agreed." Marluxia turned and summoned a dark corridor in the center of the room. "We had better go straight to the Castle to get our answers."

"Wait, you're leaving?" Zexion scampered to stand between them and the corridor. "You can't leave me here! Not alone! Not again!" He tried to grab Larxene's arm, but his hands passed through hers. "There's nothing to do here! No one to talk to! I don't even have my lexicon anymore. I don't have _any books anymore!_"

"Hey, hands off the merchandise." Larxene mocked, stepping around him. It felt good to torment someone again. "Why should we take you with us? And you said yourself that you can't leave this room. So it looks like you're stuck here. Buh-bye!"

Zexion wavered on his feet, his fingers dancing like spiders in front of his face. "I can control myself. I know I can. I can't leave because… because… I know I worked this out… right! It's because the illusion was cast on the room when I formed! I just have to cast it elsewhere… and…"

Zexion's hands glowed and he leapt forward, pressing them onto Larxene's shoulders. She could feel his hands as a slight tingling sensation and the entire room took on a slight bluish tint for a few seconds. She snarled and instinctively shoved her fist at his chest. Surprisingly, her fist connected solidly and dropped him wheezing to the floor.

"What did you do to me, you creepy psycho?" she snarled down at him.

Zexion coughed and rose unsteadily to his feet. "I'm an illusion, so I cast myself on you. Now you have to take me with you."

"Why you little…!" Larxene growled, raising her hand to strike him again, but Marluxia stopped her with a wave of his hand.

"What's done is done." he said calmly. Larxene was starting to find that monotone of his very annoying. "If he can still cast his illusions, then he might be of some slight use to us. And as you have proven, you are capable of affecting him now. In case he becomes a weakness."

"Easy for you to say." Larxene spat, throwing up her arms. "You're not going to have this figment of his own imagination following you around everywhere! Let's just go and get this over with." She stomped to the dark corridor and stepped in, pulling Zexion along in her wake.

* * *

She exited the corridor with little fuss and only a slightly pounding headache. _I'm getting better at using those. I wonder what… wait. Why is it so dark in here? _The room they were in was pitch black, with the only light a soft glow coming off Zexion.

Marluxia bumped into her as he stepped out of the corridor, which closed behind him. "This is strange. I thought I had made the portal to open in the grey room."

"Are we still in the corridor?" Zexion asked in a small voice.

In a flurry of shuffling, the darkness about them seems to stretch and flow. Hundreds of lantern-like eyes opened about them and focused on the nobodies. Dark shapes cascaded from the walls, letting pale moonlight pour in through the revealed windows. They were in the grey room, but so were _hundreds _of heartless. And they were all climbing over themselves to reach the three stupid nobodies who had stumbled into their territory.

"Well, this was certainly unexpected." Marluxia stated, pulling out his scythe with a thought. "Can you clear the room for me while I check the hallway?" He swept his weapon in an arc around his head, slicing a half dozen shadows out of the air, but scores were left to replace them. Marluxia waded through them like a farmer through a field of corn, reaping his way towards the door in a stream of petals.

"With relish!" Larxene grinned. The nearest wave of shadows was nearly upon her anyway, so she held out her palm and sent a line of lightning strikes into them. The wave broke apart and split to both sides, but Larxene tracked the flows and threw a pair on daggers into each. Lightning followed after the daggers and melted a path through the largest gatherings.

Larxene spared Zexion a glance as the heartless regrouped. "Hey, aren't you going to have any of the fun?"

Zexion had fallen to his knees and was cradling his head in his hands. "Too much. Too much is happening. Too fast." He muttered, rocking slightly and trying to stare in all directions at once. Several shadows were making a game of swiping their arms through him, but most were ignoring him in favor of the nobodies they could touch.

_Useless idiot._ Larxene's arms pumped as fast as she could lift them, her daggers returning to her hands whenever she started to run low. With every toss dozens of heartless died, but more were always ready to take their place and weight of numbers was starting to swing the battle in their favor. The clear space around her was slowly diminishing, swallowed by their inky bodies.

And she was feeling something deciding odd. She wasn't enjoying this battle as much as she normally would, and with every throw she was growing more and more annoyed. Something about them was stirring… something… inside her.

"Hmm… I think we have a problem here." Marluxia said, and Larxene quickly looked over to his side of the room. He had made it to the large double doors, but they had opened before he could touch them. Even more heartless were spilling in through the portal, not just the small shadows but larger heartless like soldiers and lancers. Standing tall above them was what looked like a large armor, stooping so it could fit in the hallway.

"Well, that's it. I'm done with this." Larxene said, summoning all her daggers to her hands. She threw them in rapid succession in a circle around her and embedded them into the walls. Lightning crackled between them and lanced out, connecting into a ball of electricity in the center. With an effort of will, Larxene commanded the web of lightning to rise slowly into the air. Every heartless that came into contact with the lightning was caught fast, rising with the ball into the air and sizzling under the constant stream of power.

When the ball was about ten feet off the ground, Larxene relaxed her attention long enough to open a dark corridor in the suddenly empty space next to her. She stepped in, letting her limit break end as she did. Once again the darkness pulled at her chest oddly, but she struggled against it and was soon out the other side.

She had travelled to Port Royal, opening the corridor along a side street near the docks. Sounds of drinking and shouting were drifting out of the open doorway of a nearby tavern and she started off towards it.

Behind her, Marluxia stepped out of the dark corridor just as it was fading away. "It's not like you to run away from a fight." he said, dismissing his scythe and brushing metaphorical dust from his sleeves.

"There would never be that many heartless at the castle if the Organization still controlled it." She said curtly, not slowing down. She looked over her shoulder and noticed that Zexion was following her without moving his feet, as if he were being dragged along after her. The thought only darkened her worsening mood.

"We still could have found out why all those heartless were there." Marluxia pointed out, trying to keep up with her. "And where are we going now, might I ask?"

Larxene had reached the doorway to the tavern, but spun on the stoop to face him. "_I'm_ going into this building and getting something to eat. I don't know if you remember or not, but I haven't eaten in over a year now. You might only need to lie in the sun or soak up water or whatever, but some of us need to recharge the normal way."

"Nobodies are not required to eat." Marluxia said, still in that infuriating calm tone. "I hardly think that this is an effective use of our time…"

"Who said anything about us?" Larxene snapped. "I said _I_ was going to get food. You can do whatever you want for all I care, and see if you can take this sniveling worm with you!"

Shock flicked across Marluxia's features as he stood in the middle of the street, meeting her glare without blinking. Zexion stood between them, twisting his head back and forth to look at them both. She held his eyes for almost two minutes, and then Larxene turned and opened the door.

Behind her, Marluxia spoke barely loud enough for her to hear. "You've been having some problems reigning in your emotions lately."

Larxene froze on the doorway. He was right, she realized. In her anger, she had let her anger speak for her. _But I don't have any emotions! How could I be feeling so strongly without…_

Suddenly a loud voice rose above the others spilling out from the door. "Today marks the three month anniversary, so the next three rounds are on me!" A chorus of cheers rose to drown out this voice.

Larxene turned back to the others. "It can't be…" she whispered. Their argument forgotten for the moment, the three of them entered the tavern. It was filled to the rafters with sailors and dockhands, crowding around tables and drowning themselves in ale and worse. A thick knot of people were crowded against the bar along the far wall.

A voice rose out of this mob. "And who are we drinking to this month?" it inquired.

"To Xaldin!" the familiar voice cried from the exact center of the crowd. "The conniving, self-absorbed workaholic that he was."

A shout of "TO XALDIN!" escaped from the lips of everyone in the room, followed by the clinks of glasses and the crashing of glasses smashed too hard.

"Are ye goin ta do this every month?" another man asked. "It's goin to get a mite expensive if ye keep uppin the number o' rounds ye buy."

The crowd parted as they shoved their way through it to reveal a ponytailed man in a black cloak lounging on the bar, draining a mug of foaming liquid. "Nothing to worry about." he said around the mug. "I've got the better part of a treasury to work through. I'll spend it how I want to. Just wait till you see how much I spend at the year's anniversary. By then we'll be drinking to the memory of this stuck-up tramp named…"

He stopped as her hand clamped onto his shoulder and spun him around. "What in… uh, Larxene?" Xigbar asked, sounding very confused.


	5. IX

IX

The stillness of the night was broken as the tavern's big picture window exploded outward. Xigbar flew through the air in a shower of glass, bounced twice on the cobblestones, and came to a crumpled rest across the street. "That's gotta be worth another scar or two." he groaned, crawling up to his knees.

Larxene stalked out of the door, slamming it closed behind her. Dozens of eyes followed her through the broken window, eyes that widened and pulled back in drunken fear when Zexion floated through the door as if it weren't there. She stomped up to Xigbar's prone form and grabbed him by the ponytail, hauling him to his feet and slamming him against the wall.

"Go on," she said, summoning her daggers into her closed fist and holding it up to his face. "Finish what you were going to call me in there. I'm in a bad mood today."

"I see you've been living up to the savage part of your title." Xigbar grinned, worming into a less uncomfortable position against the wall. Larxene breathed in sharply and drew back her fist to stab.

"Am I going to have to stop you from killing every teammate we come across?" Marluxia asked, walking calmly out of the tavern. Someone quickly shut the door behind him as soon as he was safely clear.

Xigbar took one look over Larxene's shoulder and burst out laughing. "Marluxia's here too? What in Kingdom Hearts happened to him? Man, I know I was trying to find out if a nobody could get drunk, but I thought my limit would be higher than _this_…"

"As much as I might wish otherwise," Marluxia said, stopping next to Larxene, "this isn't a hallucination of yours. Did I hear you say in there that Xaldin was dead?"

"As a doornail." Xigbar grinned, looking each one of them in the eye. "Same as Axel, Demyx, Luxord… even the Superior himself. Till you three showed up, it was only me."

"H-how?" Zexion asked, fingers dancing nervously. "Who could be strong enough to defeat Xemnas?"

"Sora." Xigbar answered, grabbing Larxene's hands and jerking out of their grip. "Cleaved through the castle like a hot knife through butter. And I was the only one who tried to stop him, too. While the others were all cowering in their rooms, I fought him mano-a-mano."

"But the others were killed." Marluxia interrupted. "You must have lost your fight. Did he allow you to live?"

"As if!" Xigbar huffed and spread his hands, as if the truth should be obvious. "My element is space; I can teleport anywhere I want with a thought. Sure, I was in a bad way. At the end I was leaking darkness like a sieve and could barely lift my arms anymore. But get this! Right before he can finish me off, something distracts him and he actually _turns his back_ on me!

"As soon as he wasn't looking, I teleported to a hospital."

Larxene stared at him for a few seconds, then dropped her head and pinched her eyes shut with her index finger and thumb. "You teleported to a hospital." she stated, seeing if it sounded any less stupid coming out of her mouth. Her two companions had similar expressions on their faces.

"What about it?" Xigbar shrugged. "Sure, the doctors said it was touch and go for a while, especially since they had never treated someone with our special kind of anatomy before, but in the end I came out in one piece. And by then the dust had settled, Sora had disappeared to I-don't-care-where, and some witch had moved into Xemnas's room. Oh, and I was enjoying my retirement, by the way, until you showed up. There, is the interrogation done?"

Larxene had moved on to massaging her temples to stave off an impending headache. _I spend over a year in a coma, floating somewhere in the endless darkness between the worlds, and only claw my way back because I'm too stubborn to disappear. This guy spends a few days in a bed being tended to by nurses and walks free. Is injustice an emotion? I don't remember anymore…_

She heard Marluxia ask something about the events of the past year, but it was suddenly too much for her. _Just… one thing at a time. I need to get a grasp on things now, before something else happens, or I'm going to end up like Zexion._ She turned sharply on her heel and walked back to the tavern.

"But… I wanted to hear what happened, too!" Zexion complained, having no choice but to follow her into the building.

Larxene kicked in the door and glared around the room. A number of people had slipped out a back door, but there were still a little over a dozen either too drunk or stubborn to leave their spots. She spotted a lamb roasting on a spit over the fireplace and stalked up to it, ripping off a leg. She relished in the heat soaking through her gloves as she tore off a mouthful of mutton and chewed.

A large man, probably the tavern keep if the dirty apron he wore was any judge, swallowed and seemed to find his courage. "You're going to have to pay for that window…" he started.

Larxene glared at him over the leg and lifted her other hand, which still clenched her daggers. She threw one sharply at a dartboard which had been set up at the other end of the bar. The dagger impaled the board dead center up to the hilt, and then the whole thing exploded in a burst of lightning. Shards of wood rained down on the stunned drinkers who were sitting too close, and a pair decided they had had enough and made a break for the door.

The tavern keep swallowed again and backed up. "Enjoy your meal." he muttered, and disappeared into the back.

Larxene nodded and took a seat at a suddenly vacant table, ready to work things out. _Anger. And satisfaction, plenty of satisfaction. No doubt about it, these are honest-to-goodness emotions I'm feeling. Not just memories, actual emotions. I must have gotten my heart back! How did THAT happen? Although… I don't remember getting this worked up over them before. Maybe I just have to get used to them again. Something still feels off… forget it. I have a heart again!_

_And as far as I can tell, none of the others do. I beat them at their own game! HA!_

She looked up at Zexion, who was straining at the window to hear what the others were saying outside. _So… now that I have a heart, what now? I don't need these losers anymore… but I'm still stuck with the illusionary wonder for now. Maybe I can convince him to haunt one of the others…_

_Wait, am I going about this the wrong way? Cyclops said that the Superior is dead. Marluxia has shown me that he's not at full power right now and Zexion literally has to follow me. Xigbar clearly doesn't have any plans…_

She smiled and stood quickly, walking to the door with a new spring in her step. Zexion noticed she was leaving and hurried over to follow, which made her smile even more. Her smile lessened somewhat when he reached up to flick her antennae raptly, but a quick punch solved that problem.

The other two nobodies were still talking as she crossed the street to join them. "Finished your dinner?" Marluxia asked sarcastically. "Xigbar just finished telling me some _fascinating_ information…"

"That's nice." Larxene said briefly, not sparing him a glance as she walked right up into Xigbar's face. "The heartless got the jump on us at the castle because they could feel the darkness of the tunnel. But your powers are much faster than that, aren't they, mister teleport?"

She took great pleasure at the expression on Xigbar's face as he backed up a step and looked at her warily. "Yes," he said slowly, "but what…?"

"Then get ready to for a little jump." She cut him off, grinning like a fool. She was in the driver's seat now, and she'd be damned if she was going to be surprised again. "Now, I'm going to tell you all exactly what's going to happen next."

* * *

There were not many heartless in the room titled Proof of Existence. They preferred to gather in the rooms with windows or balconies, where they could bask in the heart light coming down from the sky. But every now and then one would break off from the crowds and wander the halls of the castle and at the moment only a couple of shadows and a soldier were in this room. They raised their heads in unison as the air in the center aisle seemed to warp and suddenly four sources of deep darkness were in the room with them.

"Now, like I told you!" Larxene shouted, grabbing Zexion by the shoulders and shoving him in the direction she wanted. He nervously held both his arms out and pointed his glowing palms at either entrance. The doorways shimmered and suddenly a pale, glowing wall appeared over each, sealing them shut. Zexion gasped and dropped to his knees from the effort.

Meanwhile, the other three had quickly put an end to the few heartless before they could even start putting up a fight. Larxene watched the soldier collapse into a puddle of darkness with satisfaction.

"See? Just as easy as I told you it'd be." She said, grinning from ear to ear. She didn't notice as the darkness of a shadow which had died slightly behind her was pulled towards her foot and absorbed, but Marluxia did.

Marluxia quickly averted his eyes and scanned the room. "Someone has destroyed all the markers. I assume it must have been the heartless after they took over the castle."

"Saix, actually." Xigbar said, kicking over a piece that had belonged to his own marker. "He was very… enthusiastic about celebrating each member's demise. Don't know why the Superior let him smash them, but at the time I honestly didn't think there'd be another use for them. Besides, the ones who made them were Vexen and Zexion, so…"

Zexion crawled over to the nearest marker and was trying to pick the pieces up, but his fingers kept slipping through them. "My work… he destroyed my work? I can't even repair them while I'm like this."

"Well… at least no one can use ours against us." Larxene said, trying to find some light in this. She had been hoping she could see if anyone else had miraculously survived, before another one fell out of the sky unexpectedly on them. Probably riding giant swans and singing, with the way her luck was working lately.

"Not all of them were destroyed." Marluxia stated, walking amid the tombstone-like devices. "Luxord's is still whole and glowing red, I notice. Roxas's is… cut in half, but still working. Blue, so he's at least partially still alive. And Siax's marker, also red. So those two are definitely dead."

Zexion looked up from his scrambling and frowned. "But that's not right." he said, rushing over to Siax's marker. "They should be completely red, not this slight pink glow. I've never seen this reaction before. Um… if someone could push these buttons for me?" He gestures to a row of barely noticeable buttons along the side of the marker.

Marluxia stepped over and obligingly pressed the desired buttons. "But they're obviously not working anymore. Surely that means that they aren't alive, right?"

"Well, they have been killed." Zexion murmured, staring a little too intently at a string of numbers and letters scrolling across the marker. "There wouldn't be a trace of red if they were still alive. And the transport function has been disabled, which only happens when the target is no more… what does this mean, out of range? These can follow a target to other worlds, what could out of range mean?" He started mumbling to himself, completely ignoring everything else in the room.

"Listen, I think I'm going to cut out." Xigbar said, gesturing to the pale walls over each door. Black bodies were piling up against them in an ever increasing wall. "It looks like we're starting to attract visitors and I have no interest in this castle anymore."

"Where are you going?" Larxene asked sharply. "You're a part of this Organization too, so…"

"Look around you!" Xigbar said, sweeping his arm to encompass the room. "What Organization? Am I the only one who sees it's all gone? You all can pretend we're all still a team, but we're not. Later." The air warped around him and he was gone.

Larxene ground her teeth. _I'm NOT going to let him get away with defying my first order!_ "When I find him…" she promised aloud, flexing her hands in anticipation.

"He is much too dangerous to be allowed to roam free." Marluxia agreed. He flicked his hair and released a small shower of petals. Snatching one out of the air, he pressed it to his temple and closed his eyes. After a minute he shook his head as if coming out of sleep and opened a corridor.

"Follow me." he said, stepping in and disappearing. Not having any better idea, Larxene steeled herself for the shadows and entered after him.

She exited the corridor with her eyes squeezed shut, but opened them as she stepped out and quickly surveyed the surroundings. They were in Hollow Bastion, along one of the many alleyways crisscrossing the city. Several trashcans and boxes were piles against the walls and litter was scattered across the street, so it wasn't a street that was used very often. Xigbar stood only a few feet in front of them, looking like he had just seen a ghost outside of Halloween Town.

"How did you follow me?" he asked incredulously, spinning around to face them head on. Unnoticed by him, a glowing pink petal slipped out of his hood and floated to the ground.

Marluxia didn't give him any time to react, simply calling his scythe out and sweeping it at his head in the same motion. At the last second, Xigbar warped out of the way to appear standing sideways on the wall above them.

"Nice try, midget, but I'm not caught that easily!" he crowed, pulling out his arrowguns in each hand. Before they were fully formed, five of Larxene's daggers slammed into the wall around him. Since they didn't hit him head on, he didn't automatically flinch away from them before lightning coursed across the building. A twist of space and he was standing along the opposite wall, smoking slightly and taking aim.

"We shouldn't be fighting!" Zexion pleaded, trying to get anyone's attention as Larxene sent dagger after dagger up at him. Each dagger was intercepted by a dart and sent spinning away. Suddenly, Larxene grabbed Zexion by the collar of his cloak and threw him overhand at the sharpshooter.

Xigbar instinctively crossed his arms in front of his face as the screaming nobody flew up at him and passed right on through, disappearing into the building behind him. Xigbar blinked and turned around to stare at the wall in confusion, as he hadn't been told yet that Zexion was incorporeal. Before he could return his focus to the fight, Larxene bounded off the top of some boxes and tackled him to the ground. They rolled on the floor, trying to get the upper hand and crashing over a pile of trash and trashcans.

"Gah!" something shouted, falling out of one of the trashcans and trying to hop down the alleyway.

Larxene managed to be on top of the pin when they finally stopped rolling and pressed a dagger against Xigbar's good eye. "If I so much as think you're going to warp, you're going to need a teleporting seeing-eye dog. Do you… understand…" she trailed off, staring up the alley. Thinking to escape, Xigbar cast about to find a safe spot to warp to and caught a glimpse of what she was looking at. He also froze.

Having discovered the far end of the alley ended in a dead end, the musical note made completely out of water was casting about for another way out. Apparently deciding that there was only one exit to the alley, it turned about and started hopping back towards them. It made a jiggling sound each time it bopped the ground that sounded almost… melodious. It seemed to notice that the others on the street had stopped fighting and were staring at it. It turned its pointed head this way and that in confusion, as if deciding whether to bargain or flee.

"Uh… hey guys!" Demyx's voice echoed out of the note, warbling a little as if it were underwater.


	6. X

X

"D-Demyx?" Larxene said, very confused.

"Oh crap, she's alive!" Demyx screamed, turning back and trying to find another way out again. His pointless escape was cut short as Zexion walked out of the wall in front of him, cradling his head in his hands. Demyx yelped and tried to reverse direction in mid-hop and upended himself.

"Why did you do that?" Zexion demanded, nervously flicking his hair out of his eye. "I'm having a hard enough time adjusting to all this without… is that a musical note made of water? Oh no… the illusions are getting loose again…" He slid down until he was kneeling on the balls of his feet, pressing his palms into his eyes and trying to compose himself.

Larxene shifted her attention from those two to the nobody she was pinning. "Listen, I'm going to get up, but there are a few things I want you to remember. First, we've found you twice now, the second time on purpose, so if you leave we will find you again. And I don't think anything this random will happen again to distract us when we do. Are we crystal clear?"

Xigbar glared silently at her for what he assumed was a few heartbeats, and then grinned wolfishly. "Sure, why not. You want to get the band together, go for it. I'll tag along for a while." He opened his hands in surrender and allowed his arrowguns to disappear. After a second to see if he was sincere, Larxene nodded and allowed him to get up.

"Not to interrupt your victory," Marluxia said, "but I really want to understand why the Melodious Nocturne is an animate aquatic quaver. I've seen a lot of strange things today, but this is just… unusual."

"You all can see it too?" Zexion asked, peeking out between his fingers.

"It's been great seeing you guys again." Demyx warbled, righting himself and starting to hop down the alley. "No really, it's been a blast! Congratulations on coming back to life and all that, but I really, _really_ should be going…"

"Oh, no." Larxene grabbed the note around the middle near the base and held it off the ground. "I also want to hear this. I can't wait for explanation."

"Well…" Demyx began, trying unsuccessfully to wiggle out of her grip. "I don't really understand how this works, but… you remember how I can create nobody's out of water, right? I'm sure I've shown you it a few times. It's really cool, especially the ones that looks like me with their own sitars. I once tried to form this string quartet and…"

Larxene's tightened her grip and swung him quickly into the wall. He bounced off with a clear ringing sound. "Stay focused now." she said playfully.

"Yes, ma'am." Demyx said meekly. "When I was dying, there was all of this water pouring out of me. And it hit me; we're all made out of our element, right? Or something like that? So I thought 'I can control water and now I AM water!' and I just reached out and made a nobody. I wanted to make one of the cool ones with the sitars, but I never figured out how to make it not random, so I came out of like this. I snuck away while Roxes was distracted and have been in hiding. Do you want to see the cool place I found behind these buildings?"

Marluxia sighed and crossed his arms. "I have a little experience making copies, so I know that's not how it works. You shouldn't have been able to do that. At all. In any way."

"Well, I not one for the little details." Demyx said, jerking his head back oddly. It took Larxene a second to realize that he was shrugging. "I'm more of a go-with-the-flow king of guy. It worked, didn't it? Anyway we really should be going before those things get here."

"What things?" Marluxia started to ask, but a strange sound like a computer blinking echoed from the opening of the alley. Several glowing yellow orbs had appeared and were rolling down the alley towards them. As they watched them approach, another two appearing in a column of light.

"These don't look so dangerous." Marluxia said, swinging down at the leading one as it rolled close. But he forgot how much longer his scythe was compared to his smaller body and the scythe cut into the ground behind the ball. He started to extract his weapon, but the orb ground to a halt beneath him and exploded into light. The blast carried Marluxia into the air and slammed him into the wall hard enough to send cracks radiating out of the bricks.

"Woah!" Larxene shouted, dropping into her fighting posture and calling upon her lightning. It came willingly, but was sucked almost immediately into Demyx, whom she had forgotten to put down. His water form acted as an insulator, absorbing the electricity and storing it in an ever increasing charge.

"Gah!" he bawled, twisting in her grasp. "This feels really weird! I mean, REALLY weird!"

A sudden thought occurred to Larxene and she grinned evilly. She swung Demyx in a wild overhand swing at the nearest orb just as it reached her. As soon as he connected with the orb all the stored electricity exploded from him in a burst, obliterating the orb and all the others behind it. The arc of power continued to race down the alley, lashing at the walls and leaving ruin in its wake. The surge passed through Zexion and Xigbar warped out of its path, but it clipped Marluxia as he was getting to his feet. He was promptly driven smoking and jerking back to the ground.

Larxene surveyed the swath of destruction before her and rested Demyx jauntily over her shoulder. "Oh yeah, I'm keeping this!"

"Did I do that?" Demyx asked, awed. He tried to twist in her grasp to look over her shoulder at the ruined street.

"So Demyx is some kind of super weapon now?" Xigbar asked incredulously. He ran a palm over his face. "Marluxia's a dwarf, Zexion's a ghost, and Larxene is calling the shots. I remember an hour ago, when logic and sanity governed my universe. Gosh, those were great times…"

"I prefer to think that we're a team, aren't we Larxene?" Marluxia said, rising to his imposing three feet with as much dignity as he could. "I think we need to assess our situation, but somewhere that we won't get interrupted. I believe anyone in this world with even a hint of power felt your last attack and will be here soon."

"I know just the place." Larxene smirked, using Demyx as a baton as she opened up a dark corridor to Castle Oblivion. She was quite proud of herself for not letting it show how difficult it still was. She led the way and soon they were all standing in the large, empty space that had been the viewing room.

"I had completely forgotten about this place." Xigbar whistled, turning around to look at the place. "It's a bit empty for a base, though. Could definitely use a few tables and couches…"

"Then that will be your first job." Larxene said sweetly.

Xigbar spun to face her. "What?"

"Find some furniture to replace what's gone missing." She said, propping her free hand on her hip and leaning to the side. "Call it your first task for the new Organization. Besides, you already have all our funds and your abilities are perfect for the job."

"Hrmph… fine." Xigbar grumbled. "But only because I know where to get the stuff." The air about him swirled and he was gone.

"But what if he just tries to escape again?" Zexion asked.

Marluxia was already shaking his head before the question was finished. "Xigbar may have an attitude, but he also has a deep respect for those with power. And at this moment, we are the ones with the upper hand. We can rely on him to remain with us, at least long enough for him to get a measure of our new abilities first."

"And on that subject, I have a task for you too." Larxene said to him. She held up Demyx in a grip similar to the way Marluxia used to hold his scythe. "I need you to teach me how to use one of these."

* * *

An hour later, she felt she was at least competent with using a scythe. She and Marluxia had sparred continuously, trading blows back and forth across the viewing room. Demyx had objected at first, but after the first dozen or so parries he had lapsed into unintelligible murmurs and was soon unconscious. Larxene found using a close combat weapon not too difficult, once she got used to a slashing motion as opposed to her usual jabs. Even Zexion, who was trying to get some rest in the corner, offered her a complement when she started combining the forms she mimicked from Marluxia with her martial arts. By the end of the hour she was offering Marluxia an even fight, and they would have keep on going if Xigbar hadn't warped into their path.

"Woah!" he shouted, dropping the end of a sofa he was holding up and diving out of the way. A blue scythe swished through the air where his neck had been and a pink one tore a hole in the sofa. "Watch where you're swinging those things!

"Hmm… a good enough time for a rest anyway." Marluxia allowed his weapon to dissolve into petals and ran a hand over the sofa. "Aren't these the same ones that were here before?"

"I got them from the same place." Xigbar grumbled, getting to his feet. "Did your taste in furniture change over the last year? I'll make sure to check if they have any floral patterns for your room." He vanished again.

"Reminds me, I have to check on my garden." Marluxia said, starting to walk down the hall. "Larxene, would you walk with me?" Larxene eyed him oddly, but fell into step beside him.

"Wha… is it over?" Demyx asked groggily, coming to. Larxene slipped him through a loop she had cut into her belt and kept a hand rested on the handle, carrying him like a sword.

They walked in silence down the hall and into Marluxia's old room. Xigbar had apparently started with the living quarters, as there was now a white bed and dresser dominating the room. Marluxia walked around these with hardly a glance and tugged open his window. He had a little trouble lifting himself up over the sill, but dropped easily to the other side and looked back at her as she climbed through.

"But… there wasn't a room for Deep Jungle…" Zexion said, walking through the windowsill.

"Oh cool!" Demyx cried, swinging about to look at the whole place. "Is this all yours, Marluxia? Why didn't you ever tell me you had an awesome garden?"

"Have you given any thought as to what our next plans are?" Marluxia asked her, ignoring the other two.

"Not as much…" she said cautiously. "Things had been happening too rapidly for any sort of a plan to form."

"Well I have." Marluxia put his hands behind his back and looked up at her. "The rest of the Organization may be gone, but our objective remains unchanged. We must try again to find our hearts. But with such a diminished team and no access to a keyblade user, recreating Kingdom Hearts is unfeasible. But…"

He locked his eyes on hers. "You know some other way, don't you?"

Larxene hardened her face and returned his stare. _He knows! What should I tell him? After all, I don't know why I suddenly have one. I was hoping I'd have more time to think about it before telling anyone else._

Demyx twisted his head back and forth as the silence grew oppressive, trying to look at both of them, and then turned to Zexion. "What are they talking about?"

Zexion started to shrug, but a confused look crossed his face. "D-does anyone else hear that? Please tell me someone else hears that!"

Larxene frowned and cocked her head. She could hear something. It sounded like someone… whistling? "Did Xigbar get in here?" she said.

"No one should know of this room." Marluxia countered. They started off at a jog down the path Larxene had taken earlier, dipping and twisting to avoid the grabbing vines and ferns.

When they arrived at the clearing where the pod had been they skidded to a halt, eyes wide. A hooded man wearing the Organization's cloak was crouching across the clearing. He stood calmly and turned to face them, trilling through the last verse of the tune. Draped over one arm was the third spare cloak Marluxia had left behind.

Luxord curled his free hand under his chin and smirked. "Well, it's about time you arrived."


	7. VIII

VIII

"Oh, hi Luxord!" Demyx shouted cheerfully. "You guys didn't tell me Luxord survived too!"

"That's 'cause he didn't!" Larxene snarled, calling out her knives and pointing them at the gambler. "We saw your portal marker! It said you were dead! How are you alive?"

"Perhaps I am dead." Luxord said cryptically, folding the spare cloak comfortably under his arm. "Perhaps we've all cashed in our chips and this is just a dream. Or perhaps I got bored sitting on the sidelines and decided to deal myself back into the game."

Marluxia started forward. "It's good to see you alive, but you really need to tell us how…"

"I'm sorry, but the big players are talking." Luxord snapped, snapping his fingers without looking away from Larxene. His giant cards appeared from nowhere, gliding across the lawn and swirling in a tight circle around Marluxia.

Larxene caught only a few quick glimpsed of his confused face before the cards broke their circle and glided away. The spot where number eleven had been standing was as empty as if he had never been there.

"Where is he?" Larxene demanded, trying hard not to reveal how his sudden disappearance had unnerved her.

"Not where, when." Luxord said, turning his back on her. "But why should one pawn worry about another? That's the job of kings and queens."

"What?" Larxene snarled. The events of the last few hours had pushed her to the ends of her patience, and this situation was threatening to break it. "I am nobody's pawn! I'm all that's holding this group together!"

"With a poker face like that?" Luxord said, still not facing her. He opening up a dark corridor and stepped up to it. "It's no wonder your new team is about to fold."

A pair of daggers streaked across the room, but he had already stepped into the corridor. The weapons passed through the swirling darkness harmlessly and exploded against some trees across the clearing.

"Get back here and say that again!" Larxene screamed, diving forward. The corridor was still open, and she'd be damned if she was going to let him close it and escape.

"Larxene, I think he's trying to bait you…" Zexion began, but Larxene was beyond reasoning. She dove into corridor and streaked across to the other side. She didn't even notice that, in her anger, the darkness was unable to gain a hold of her new heart.

She ground to a halt outside the other end of the corridor and quickly looked around. She immediately recognized the area as the residential district of Hollow Bastion, but the streets were deserted. The only source of light was coming from a large house on the other side of the street.

As she got closer to the building, Luxord's voice echoed out from the partially open door. "I'm all in."

Larxene grinned with all her teeth and stalked up to the door, summoning her knives and she walked. A large poster covered the door, advertizing a huge poker tournament that was being held inside, today! She ignored it and kicked the door in, breaking it off one of its hinges with the force of her kick.

"I'll call your bluff…" a strong steady voice was saying as the door swung inward and slammed into the wall. Everyone in the room froze and turned to Larxene as she stalked in and glared around the room. A large collection of people where clustered around a circular table at the other end of the house. Most of the people at the table were already knocked out of the tournament, including an old looking blond man in a white shirt and blue pants.

The speaker, one of only two at the table who still had chips, stood and addressed her. "What is the meaning of this?" Leon asked.

Larxene ignored him, for the other man at the table was Luxord. He was staring at her over a pile of multicolored chips, a pair of cards still held nonchalantly in one hand. For some reason he wasn't wearing his cloak, instead dressed in a sweeping green cloak with a wide open collar over white pants. He had a look of confusion and a little fear on his face, and not even a hint of recognition.

Of course, all these details registered in her mind after she had thrown her knives. The daggers blasted through the pile of chips and carved into his chest, blowing him from his chair. The lightning struck as he bounced off the back wall, driving him to the floor. He lay twitching for a second and then was still. And then to Larxene's extreme surprise and confusion a large, pink heart rose from his body and vanished into the air.

Suddenly, Luxord's giant cards appeared, covering all the walls in the house. A picture of a clock face appeared on each of them, revolving at a break neck speed.

"What is happening?" Leon shouted again, drawing an _enormous_ sword out of nowhere. He leveled it in Larxene's direction and started forward, but suddenly halted in his step. He stood statue-like, balanced on the end of his toes with his eyes locked forward. Everyone in the room was frozen, save for the nobodies. To top off the creepiness, all the clock faces on the cards had also stopped, frozen at midnight.

One of the cards flipped over, revealing a picture of Luxord. "Nicely played." Luxord said, stepping out of the card and appraising the body on the floor, which was fading into darkness.

"What is going on?!?" Zexion screamed, wringing his hair and summing up the thoughts of everyone in the room quite well.

"History, of course, though not in the order you understand." Luxord answered, opening up a dark corridor. "Let's walk while we talk. I wouldn't want to be late for this all important date."

There were many things Larxene wanted to say, but they seemed to be stuck beneath a lump of anger in her throat. Still, she nodded stiffly and followed him into the corridor. Once again, her anger seemed to be keeping the shadows at bay and this time she took notice of it.

"Did I ever tell you how I joined the Organization?" Luxord asked before she could say anything.

"Of course not." Larxene said through gritted teeth. "You never told anyone about your mysterious past. It was one of your more annoying traits. Though I'm certain I could name a few more now without any trouble…"

"I apologize for playing my cards so close to my chest, but I needed to make sure you played your part." He said, gesturing with his arm and opening up the exit. "I didn't have much of an afterlife before the Organization found me. But I will never forget how I died. After all, getting struck by lightning while indoors is no ordinary occurrence, and at the championship table of the poker tour no less! What a way to go!"

Larxene froze before the exit and stared at him with mounting horror. "You can't mean…!"

"I have to thank you for striking when you did." Luxord smirked. "I had a jack and an eight, off suit. You saved me the indignity of losing."

Zexion was shaking his head in denial. "But the marker said you were killed! I think, anyway… the reading was strange…"

"I did lose my second life on the balcony in battle with Sora." Luxord said, smirking in a very annoying manner. "Or at least, I will lose my life there. I have control over the time stream; did you really think I never took walks down it? There are still many hands for me to play before I go back then to be killed." With that, he stepped out of the corridor.

Larxene walked out of the corridor numbly and noted that they were in the gardens of Wonderland. To be specific, they were in the courtroom area, and their sudden appearance had apparently interrupted a trial. An amazingly fat woman in a red and black checkered gown was waving around a baton and shouting at the top of her lungs.

"First that body and now these intruders? Off with their heads! Off with all their heads!" she screamed, rushing out of the room without a backwards glance. A swarm of soldiers made of playing cards sprang up along the walls and lowered spears in their direction.

Luxord ignored them all, walking up to the dais the fat woman had been sitting at. His past self was lying on top of it, and starting to get up groggily.

"There you are, nice to see myself in one piece." Luxord said, looking over the prone form like a prudent bidder at an auction. He grimaced and pulled a spiked mace decorated with the Organization's symbol out of his past self's loose hands. "Urg, how uncivilized a weapon. Glad I never knew I had it."

"Um, are you going to lend a hand?" Larxene said, spinning carefully to look at the entire army slowly surrounding her. She had Demyx in one hand and her knives in the other, and none of the card soldiers looked brave enough to be the first to attack.

"Ah right, I forgot I wasn't really aware for this part." Luxord said, snapping his fingers.

The air rippled as Luxord's cards appeared again, forming a large circle around the room and two smaller circles around the groups of nobodies. The circles started to spin in opposite directions and a clock face appeared on each card, its hands spinning backwards. The card soldiers immediately started to shrink, growing younger and younger until their gloves and boots fell off and disappeared into smoke. In a matter of moments there were only a bunch of playing cards scattered around the garden, each glowing slightly as the Organization's symbol slowly appeared on their backs. The giant cards vanished into nothingness as the smaller ones floated up into Luxord's waiting hands.

Luxord pressed the deck and the spare cloak into his past self's hands as it slowly sat up. "What…?" the new nobody started to say.

"Now now, now is not the _time_ for questions." Luxord said, pressing his hands into the new Luxord's chest. "Say hello to Xemnas for me!"

He shoved the nobody backwards off the bench, a strange glow coming off his palms. His past self became transparent almost immediately, disappearing back in time to presumably the point in time when he was discovered by Xemnas.

"I'm glad that bit of business is out of the way." Luxord said, flipping the mace in one hand and testing the weight thoughtfully. "Hmm… perhaps I shouldn't have been so hasty to take away this weapon. Anyway, shall we return to Castle Oblivion? I am eager to return to my regular seat at our table."

"No. No, no, no, no, a _thousand times no!_" Larxene shouted, throwing up her arms. "This is too much! This is the last straw! I've seen too many strange things today, and now it has to stop!"

"Could you please not shout?" Zexion said, fingers dancing nervously. "I'm trying to follow-"

"It's really not that hard." Luxord said. "I control time, therefore-"

"Hey, does this mean there are two Luxords" Demyx asked. "If so, does that mean-"

"_That's enough!_" Larxene screamed. "I've had it with _you!_" she pointed at Zexion, who flinched. "I've had it with _you!_" she pointed at Luxord, who looked wounded at her tone. "And I've had it with _you!_" she shouted at Demyx, waving him back and forth to accentuate her point.

"I've had it with everyone!" she continued. "Ever since I woke up today it's been one thing after another! One set of ridiculous circumstances more insane than the next! Well, that's it, I'm done. You can all do whatever you want at this point, I'm spending the rest of the evening on my own."

"I can't leave you." Zexion pointed out timidly. "And I don't have the strength to cast myself of someone else this soon."

"And you won't put me down." Demyx put in.

"Then _be silent!_" she shouted, spinning around and stabbing her finger at Luxord. "You aren't attached to me, are you? Then you can go back to the castle and the others on your own. I'm going… I'm going to relax… I'm going to get… some ice cream. Yeah, that's it, ice cream. A simple task… surely…"

She opened a dark corridor and strode into it before anyone could say anything else. She hardly noticed as the darkness pulled at her heart uncomfortably before depositing her in the alley next to the refreshment shop in Twilight Town.

There was no line at the shop so she walked right up to the counter and bent over it, leaning her temple on the cool wood. Exhaustion fell over her like a blanket as the events of the past few hours crashed down on her all at once.

"I'll have… oh, what did those three eat all the time… sea salt. A sea salt bar." She mumbled into the counter, not looking up.

"Sea salt? We haven't gotten many requests for that flavor since the kids went back to school." The ice cream man said, his back to her as he reached up to a box resting on the top of the freezer. "I think we have some up here… yes we do! I love sea salt myself, so… uh… guh… gah!"

Larxene frowned and slowly looked up from the counter. For an endless second, the two of them could only stare at each other with nearly identical looks of disbelief on their faces. Forgotten, the bar of ice cream started to drip down Axel's numb fingers and splatter onto his pristine, white apron.


	8. IV

IV

Larxene was the first to break the silence almost a minute later. "Well, are you going to give me the ice cream?"

Axel continued to stare at her incredulously, but slowly held out his arm as if he expected her to take it off at the elbow. She picked the bar out of his hands and took a bite out of it, chewing very slowly. The silence was starting to get oppressive.

A bead of sweat slowly fell down Axel's forehead. "How are-"

"Oh, no." Larxene cut sharply. "No questions from you, just mine. And it's a very simple one. How are you alive? Marluxia said you were killed by Sora."

"Marluxia is alive?" Axel said in a weak voice.

"He survived that." Zexion said in a strained voice. Larxene looked at him over her shoulder and was surprised to see that he was livid, almost shaking in anger. "He faked his death. But I heard Xigbar say before you dragged me away in Port Royal that he fought Roxas in the digital Twilight Town…"

"Xigbar is also alive?" Axel whispered, starting to back away without tearing his eyes from Larxene.

"Actually, he lived through that too." Demyx put in, trying once again to wiggle out of the belt loop. "He was still alive when I was taken out. But I overheard some scary people say that the entire Organization was killed a few months back."

Axel spun, tore open a back door, and ran off as fast as he could.

"Oh my… he's actually _running_!" Larxene giggled, gripping the ice cream bar in her teeth. She seized the counter in both hands and flipped above it, catching the roof's overhang with the back of her legs. Like an Olympic gymnast she continued the spin, pulling her body up with the strength of her legs alone.

She paused to get her balance, and then loped along the roof's edge. Below her, Axel sprinted down the alley as fast as his legs could carry him. She waited until he slowed down to look fearfully over his shoulder before diving off the rooftop. She landed on his back feet first, driving him to the cobblestones and sending his little paper hat flying. Demyx was out in a flash and she drove his head halfway into the ground inches from Axel's ear. Axel immediately froze.

"Let's not run off again before we finish our conversation, shall we?" She said sweetly, taking hold of her ice cream in her free hand and biting into it. "Now I'll ask this one more time. Everyone thinks you're dead, although they seem to be a little confused over when it happened. How are you alive?"

"I-I have a talent for not dying when I ought to?" Axel tried. She kneed him hard in the lungs.

"I'm serious!" Axel sputtered when he got his breath back. "All I wanted was to find some way to get Roxas back after the others drove him away and before I knew it, I was labeled a traitor. The only way to get Saix and Xemnas off my back was to fake my death, but I had already done it several times. They would have suspected me of doing it again if I hadn't made it so… believable. Um… why do you have a blue scythe instead of your daggers?"

"Did you have to slam me into the ground that hard? It hurt!" Demyx whined.

"Why is the blue scythe talking?" Axel asked.

"You are a traitor!" Zexion screamed, throwing himself at Axel. Larxene caught him by the collar to hold him back, but he continued to claw futilely around her arm. "You did this to me! You're just lucky I'm almost out of power right now, but _once I've rested… _I had to suffer in that _hell_ because of you!_ Because of you!_"

"What are you talking about? And how are you ali-" Axel started, but Larxene jabbed him in the kidney with her elbow.

"Did we forget already? I said I was asking the questions now. My next one is: why are you working at an ice cream shop? You could have gone anywhere, done whatever you wanted, and you chose to get a job?"

"Well… I needed the money…" Axel said lamely.

Larxene eyed him curiously. "Then why didn't you race Xigbar for the treasury if you wanted money? Hmm… you're not putting much of a fight. And you ran instead of opening a dark corridor to any point in the multiverse…"

A thought occurred to her and she smiled with all her teeth. "You've lost your flames, haven't you?"

"How did you…" Axel stared, then steeled his expression and nodded. "Well, that's what happens when you put your all into an attack. And I _had_ to make it believable."

"Are you going to kill him?" Zexion asked eagerly. "You tried killing everyone else. _He _tried to kill everyone else! Stab him!"

"No. If he is powerless, I can take my time!" Larxene said triumphantly. She hauled Axel to his feet and opened a corridor to the castle. "Finally, something goes right today! You're coming with me."

"Where?" Axel asked nervously.

"To meet some of your old friends." Larxene said wickedly, frog-marching him into the corridor.

* * *

"I can't believe you just let him go." Zexion sulked.

Larxene ignored him. Halfway through the corridor to the castle the darkness had attacked her with renewed viciousness, almost causing her to drop Axel and double up in pain. She had made it through to the other side in one piece but her good mood had been obliterated. Releasing Axel, she had told him to get lost and wandered up to her room.

"Whatever." She muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. "I'll have plenty of time to get back at him later. All I want now is a shower…"

Demyx hopped around her room, glad to be freed from his sheath. "You take showers? But I thought that since your element is lightning, you couldn't get wet."

Larxene turned and looked at him incredulously. "How does that make sense? Water is an insulator; it would contain electricity, not agitate it. And how would I drink or bathe if I couldn't touch water? I've been whipping you about all day with no side effects, haven't I?"

She shook her head and stepped into the private bathroom connected to her room. Demyx asked something, but she ignored him and slammed the door on his face. She turned on the water, stepped over to the sink, and looked at her reflection as she started unzipping her cloak.

"I mean… that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Regular water wouldn't… hey!" she shouted, spinning around to face Zexion. "What are you doing in here?"

Zexion's face was decidedly red, and his fingers twisted with nervous energy. "Um… I'm cast on you… so I can't… uh… be far from…" he stammered.

Her fist connected with his nose with lightning speed, driving his head backwards towards the far wall. Larxene followed with him, continuing to push into his face until he flew through the wall back into her room. Her fist raised a ring of cracks in the plaster as it connected with something solid.

"You stay out there, hallucination!" she bellowed. "Or so help me, I will show you what happens when you combine water and lightning in someone's eyes!" She snarled a few more curses under her breath as she shucked out of her cloak and stepped up to the shower.

She didn't even have one foot in the bath, however, before her balance failed her and she fell to her knees. She grabbed onto the towel rack and hung on for dear life, her chest wracked with pain. Her heart was beating at a hundred miles an hour and her vision was beginning to tunnel. _What's… what's happening?_

Small strands of darkness started to swirl around her chest and suddenly a glowing pink sphere appeared on her chest. The pain in her heart intensified and the dark strands wrapped themselves over the pink glow, seemingly trying to pull it out of her.

_Is that… no! My heart! My heart is being rejected from me!_

Her free hand clawed at her chest, but the darkness just passed through it unimpeded. She lost her grip on the towel rack and collapsed to the hard linoleum. Her wandering gaze fell upon her discarded cloak and she grabbed at it like a drowning sailor. As soon as she pressed it to herself the pain reached its peak and the strands of darkness lashed about the room like leaves in a hurricane.

And suddenly they were gone, vanishing as fast as they had appeared. Larxene lay gasping, half in the shower and half out. She clutched the cloak to her chest desperately as water ran down her hair in rivers and unfamiliar fears played through her mind.

* * *

The giant cards swam in a tight circle, returning Marluxia to his garden soundlessly. Their job complete, they vanished into whatever pocket of time they exist in when not being used.

"…you survived." Marluxia finished, his finger pointing accusingly. He blinked and looked around in confusion. "What… where did everyone go?"

He spun slowly to survey the whole area, but there was no one to be seen. He was alone for the first time since he woke up from the pod. _It must have been Luxord's doing. He removed me from the picture so that he could deal with Larxene on his own. But why would he exclude me?_

Truth be told, he was a little concerned with his partner of late. As he gathered his thoughts he held his arm out, subconsciously calling upon his power. New grass started to grow out of holes dug up by footprints, while twigs and ferns that had been bent straightened. Lost in thought, he started back towards the entrance to his garden.

_With the Superior gone and the Organization in disarray, there is a power vacuum that needs to be filled. Larxene believes herself already filling that roll, and for the moment I'm not powerful enough to challenge her. And she is treating me like the others rather than her accomplice. We were going to rule the Organization together… well, with my intelligence guiding her power anyway…_

_Still, _he thought as he approached the window into his room, _her actions of late have created quite the beautiful chaos out of our order. And I can thrive and grow in any chaos. If Larxene is adding members to her side, then I just need to gather some allies of my own._

He lifted himself over the windowsill with a smirk and set off to increase his power base.

* * *

Zexion stared at the book as if his gaze could bore holes in it. The book rested innocently at an angle on the edge of Larxene's desk, below the row of books it had probably slipped from. The book was one he had never seen before, advertizing itself as the novelization of _the_ smash hit movie of the summer. He tried again and again to turn over the cover, but his fingers slipped though it every time.

"It had to be a mystery…" he whispered, eyes glued to the title. "It's been so long… and it just HAD to be a mystery story…"

"Want me to open that for you?" Demyx asked cheerfully, hopping over.

"Stay back!" Zexion cried hysterically, imposing himself between the note and the book. "You're made of water! You'll ruin the book if you touch it!"

"Geez, you don't have to be so mean about it…" Demyx sulked, hopping away towards the door.

Zexion breathed heavily for a minute, then slowly sank to the floor. He pressed both palms against his eyes and shut out the world around him. Unnoticed by him, he started to rock back and forth on his heels.

"All right." he whispered. "You really had me going there, for a while. You did everything right… but in the end you made a few mistakes. There was nothing wrong with Axel. If you wanted to keep the pattern going, you should have made him a scarecrow or… or a matchstick or something. And almost seeing Larxene naked… you've gotten clever…

"But I'm onto you now! I'm still in the basement and this… this is all my illusions, playing with me. But I am the master! I am! So when I open my eyes, I want you gone. Do you hear me illusions? I won't go insane yet! Well… here I go…"

Slowly, he pried his hands away and looked around. The room remained the same and he almost sagged with relief. _I'm not insane! I am out! It's all real! Unless… the illusions are still playing with me…_

Lost in his own thoughts, his eyes were drawn unconsciously back to the book on the table.

* * *

"What?" someone shouted when Xigbar warped into the viewing room.

Xigbar looked around the room for the source of the sound. The room was empty as far as he could tell. He put down the two vases he was carrying and started towards one of the couches on the far side of the room. _Call me crazy, but did I just see a glimpse of red hair?_

"Ah, Xigbar. Just the man I wanted to see." A confident voice said. Xigbar spun to see Marluxia walking into the room.

"Hey, I just finished carting your furniture." Xigbar sighed, shaking his head back and forth. "If you're here with another job for me, you can go tell the lightning lady that I'm done for the day."

Marluxia paused and tilted his head to the side, appraising him. "It doesn't sound like you approve of her ordering you around."

"I don't like having my arm twisted." Xigbar returned. "Now if you don't mind, there's a bar in Port Royal that's been free of me for far too long."

"What would you do if I said that I was the one who found you, and that Larxene couldn't track you without me?" Marluxia said calmly.

"I'd ask why you'd tell me such a thing." Xigbar said, just as calculating. He looked down at him and tried to figure out where this was going. _He's obviously trying to bait me into something, but what…_

Marluxia smiled as if he had scored some kind of victory. "You should know that Luxord survived, too."

"Good thing I decided to fill all the bedrooms." Xigbar joked, trying to hide how much this news had rocked him. He turned partway around to look at the sofa again and chuckled.

"I'll leave you with those bits of food for thought. There are others I need to meet with and you have a bar stool to warm." Marluxia tilted his head slightly, spun on his heel, and walked out of the room in a swirl of petals.

_Pompous dwarf, _Xigbar thought. He turned around to the sofa and made a half step towards it, just for fun, and warped away before his foot hit the ground. The swirling eddies of space surrounded him comfortingly, depositing him in a dimly lit wooden room.

"Back already?" Asked a figure in the shadows across the room, facing away from him and looking out a window.

"I'm going to need more of the old beds we removed from the castle." Xigbar explained. "It seems more of us have survived. And… they'll probably be coming to look for you soon."

The shadowy figure turned to look at him. "Then I will have to prepare for my return."

* * *

Demyx pawed at the doorknob with his head, but it was one of the ball shaped ones and he couldn't get a grip. He sighed to himself and turned around, leaning against the door. His thin body bent almost sixty degrees, but he hardly noticed anymore.

"Man, this sucks." He pouted. "I can't get out of here and any minute now Larxene's going to be back. I just know she's going to make fun of me some more… and Zexion doesn't want anything to do with me, even though we're in the same boat."

He straightened into a more comfortable position. "There must be something positive about this. Always look for the silver lining, that's my motto! I know I've had fun with Larxene before… yeah! There was that one time…

-+++~~~Demyx's Flashback~~~+++-

Demyx was too engrossed to notice that he had left the door to his room open. So engrossed was he, that he didn't even look up as sharp footfalls echoed in from the hallway, slowly getting closer. Larxene passed by his door and continued on for a few steps before stopping. She backtracked slowly and stuck her head into his room.

"Demyx, what are you doing?" she asked critically.

Demyx looked up over his shoulder guiltily. Several puppets and marionettes littered the floor around him, along with sewing needles and threads. A couple of tiki-looking wooden masks were leaning against his legs, their moveable mouths hanging open. The strings of a pair of marionettes dangled from his hands into a mini dark corridor open in the floor between his legs.

A deep, melodious voice echoed out from the corridor. "Are you _reeaa-day!_"

"Um… playing with my friend?" Demyx said nervously. "He's got this amazing singing voice… and look! He's willing to gather hearts from some place called New Our Leans, I think it's called, and all he wants in exchange are Shadows! I mean… it's easier than fighting heartless to collect hearts… and he's such a fun guy… you're not going to tell Saix, are you?"

She stared at him for a few seconds with that look that always made him sweat, and then walked over and sat next to him. "Pass me a puppet." She said, grinning evilly. And they had the best day ever.

-+++~~~End of Flashback~~~+++-

"Yes, that was a great day." Demyx said wistfully. "That's it! Larxene is always happy when she's torturing someone, so I just have to make sure that someone isn't me! She was picking on Xigbar earlier; maybe she'll make him her new gopher!"

He bounced around the room happily, thinking of more positive thoughts. "And if Larxene's going to be carrying me around, I won't have to walk anymore! I'll be taking laziness to a new level! I wonder if I can convince her to at least tie me in upright, maybe a shoulder strap…"

* * *

Luxord put the burner on high and set the tea kettle on to boil. He whistled while he worked, pulling down the bowl of sugar and setting it to the side of the stove. _It's a good thing I waited for Xigbar to fill the kitchen before returning,_ he thought. Not that he had talked to Xigbar yet. There were many perks to knowing and traveling the time stream, but it was always the little ones that made him smile.

"Please!" Zexion's voice echoed down the staircase and in through the open door. "Will someone open it to the last page for me! Please! I need to know who framed Roger Rabbit! _I need to know!_"

"Ha ha ha!" Luxord laughed. "Next time I'll leave a suspense novel out for him to find."

The tea pot was just beginning its whistle when Marluxia walked into the kitchen. _Right on time…_

"Sorry about earlier, mate." Luxord said, picking up the pot and motioning to a pair of cups. "I just had a _small_ task for our lovely lady that couldn't be delayed. Tea?"

Marluxia paused with his mouth partially open, whatever he had been about to say dead on his lips. He nodded and cautiously accepted the steaming cup. "No hard feelings, I guess."

"No feelings at all!"Luxord reminded him with a chuckle, stirring a sugar cube into his drink. "But we each have our _little_ games that we play. It's not like we have real hearts to bet on the line…"

Again, Marluxia paused and tried to consider everything he was hearing. "You sound if you have some inside information. I would dearly like to hear what makes you so confident."

"Ah, I can play my hand to my chest better than that." Luxurd leaned down and looked him right in the eye. "I do know what you're trying to do. And allow me to remind you of one little fact; I know how this will all turn out."

"Then I assume I can count on you to pick the winning side." Marluxia said, his entire expression going as hard as steel.

"Sides? I thought this was an open table, not a heads-up match." Luxord answered knowingly, savoring his first sip. "Drink up, you're tea's going cold."

Marluxia glared at him for a minute before picking up his cup. Luxord waited until he had started drinking before openly looked over his shoulder at the door. "Hey, isn't that Axel?" he asked casually.

Marluxia choked on his tea, sputtering it down the front of his cloak. He spun in time to catch a glimpse of a figure running down the staircase through the door. Not saying any form of goodbye, he dashed from the kitchen after the retreating figure.

"Almost too easy." Luxord chuckled to himself. He pulled a newspaper out from an inner pocket and opened it to the headlines, sipping every now and then from his tea. The newspaper was dated two weeks from today. _Always good to keep up on current events…_

* * *

Axel took the steps three at a time as he raced down them. Above him, he could hear Marluxia's sharp footfalls catching up fast. _Why me?_ He thought, not for the first time.

Larxene letting him go without so much as a light beating had been a big surprise, but just one more to add to the pile of them that this day was becoming. _That was Luxord in there with him! I don't understand, why aren't any of them _dead_?_

He rounded the corner at the third floor and came up short, pressing himself against the wall. Xigbar had just warped into the room up ahead, effectively blocking off his escape. _Well, if you can't make an exit, make an entrance._

When Marluxia rounded the corner one floor up, he found Axel causally leaning against the wall, waiting for him.

"Hello!" Axel said with forced cheerfulness. He had a whole speech prepared, but he forgot it immediately upon seeing Marluxia. The two stared at each other for a few seconds in confusion.

"Hey, you're only half my size!" Axel laughed.

"You… you…" Marluxia sputtered, and then apparently decided to tackle a smaller question first. "Why are you dressed as a milkman?"

Axel looked down at his clothes. He hadn't had time to sneak into someone's room and steal a cloak, as he had hoped to make it out the front door as soon as possible, so he was still wearing his work clothes. A white apron over a white, button down shirt tucked into tan pants. Definitely a jarring look for those used to seeing him. He'd have to remember the effect.

"Well, we all had to find our own ways to spend the last few months." He said swiftly, hoping to keep him off balance by commanding the conversation. "So what happened to you? Elephant sit on your head?"

Marluxia shook his head and advanced threateningly. "I think it's time to pay you back for what you did here over a year ago."

"Talk about holding a grudge." Axel bluffed. "You couldn't take me then; what makes you think you could now? Or did your new friends at the lollipop guild teach you some new tricks?"

In answer, Marluxia summoned his scythe and advanced steadily. Axel flicked his eyes quickly to the sides, looking for some kind of escape, and saw Xigbar walking up the stairs towards them.

"Well, if it isn't Red!" Xigbar announced, holding his arms spread. "Did Larxene drag you back as well?"

Marluxia paused. "You don't sound surprised to see him…"

"Of course not!" Xigbar said, draping his arm over Axel's shoulder. "He's been working at the Snack Shack in Twilight Town. Looks like you were abducted right out of work, man."

"I wasn't aware you knew where I was…" Axel improvised. Inside, he was fuming, but he knew how to roll with a fortuitous situation. "Wanna go grab a drink? I'll tell you about how she beat me into coming back…"

"You too?" Xigbar laughed, pulling him away up the stairs.

"Wait!" Marluxia snarled, stomping up the stairs after them. "I haven't gotten my pound of flesh yet!"

* * *

He paused in his writing as a booming sound rattled the walls around him. "What are they doing out there now, fighting each other?" he snarled, slamming his pencil down and standing up.

"Stomping up and down the staircases, rather than simply opening a corridor to where they need to go." He muttered as he stamped over to the door. "Shouting at the top of their voices, moving _furniture_, and now smashing things? Don't they understand that with all the doors open, sounds echo all the way down the castle?"

He slammed open his door and stuck his head out. "Will you all be _quiet_ up there? I'm trying to _work!_" Vexen shouted, and slammed his door closed again.


	9. XIV

XIV

The castle was dead silent for nearly a full minute, as if the building itself was holding its breath and waiting to see what would happen. Then five dark corridors opened simultaneously in the tiny hallway and the surviving nobodies looked around at each other quizzically.

"OK, did everyone just hear what I heard?" Larxene demanded, staring around at all the corners of the room.

"I thought I did." Zexion said, also glancing every which way. "But it was muffled by the floors…"

"Woah, what's up with this huge hole in the floor?" Demyx asked, hopping over to the edge and peering over.

Axel shrugged and tried to pull his arm out of Marluxia's death grip. "No idea. It was here when I emptied the place. Why did you have to drag me down here with you?"

"Aha! You're the one who cleared out my castle!" Marluxia accused.

"Why are you soaking wet?" Xigbar asked, staring critically at Larxene's sopping wet cloak. "Did you take a shower in your clothes?"

Larxene glared at him. "None of your business. Now, focus people! I-" Whatever she had been about to say was interrupted as a door that had blended seamlessly into the wall banged open and Vexen stuck his head out again.

"What did I just get finished telling you? Go have your meeting or group therapy or whatever this is somewhere else so I can work in peace!" he lectured, and slammed the door in their surprised faces.

Of course, the door stood no chance against the explosion of lighting applied to it only a moment later. The door disintegrated inward, showering dozens of beakers and apparatuses in bits of wood and plaster.

"What are you doing?" Vexen screamed as they piled into his lab. He might have added more demands and insults, but Larxene clamped her hand over his throat and choked it off.

"How… are… you… alive?" she hissed through clenched teeth.

Vexen slapped her hand away with annoyance and sneered at her. "How quickly we all forget. I. Am. A. _Scientist_. And before the untimely events of over a year ago I was working on creating replicas for the organization. Did any of you honestly think I wouldn't make any for myself? That was the first thing I did, once I perfected the procedure."

"You're… a replica?" Xigbar asked dubiously. "Then where's your real nobody?"

"Bah, one of the first things I discovered in my research is that each of these replicas are 'real', in the sense of the word." Vexen said, "But if you mean my original body, it's in frozen animation in that freezer back there. Fifteen months of work and I still haven't discerned how to repair the damage _you_ caused, Axel."

"Wait, wait, wait…" Zexion interrupted, waving his hands back and forth before him. "You mean to tell me… that you've been alive this whole time… just across the hall from me… _and you never came over and helped me?_"

"Help you? Why should I have?" Vexen looked around the mostly speechless group and pointed to each in turn. "I just naturally assumed we'd each utilize our unique talents to escape our demises. Marluxia would just grow himself a new body from one of his plants. Demyx has clearly transferred himself temporarily into one of his water bodies. Xigbar probably just teleported to a hospital. Luxord exists at multiple points in time already. Larxene is a natural defibrillator, so she probably just recharged herself. Axel is a skilled actor and probably just faked it convincingly. And as for you, Zexion… you've got that whole illusion thing going for you. You could have made the keybearer see whatever you wished and escaped."

Every mouth in the room had dropped to the floor. "How… did you figure that out?" Marluxia asked weakly.

"What? I was right?" Vexen sputtered, gaping at them. "I was being sarcastic! Why would you turn yourself into a musical note made of water? How did you grow a new body from a flower? Why would you stop halfway? What kind of stupidity would cause you all to try such ridiculous-?"

Daggers and glowing arrow heads crisscrossed over Vexen's chest, pushing him back into one of his desks. Glowing streams of light poured from Zexion's hands, slamming into Vexen's chest and doubling him over. A pink scythe cleaved between his shoulder blades and several large cards pinned his arms and legs to the floor. Axel quickly walked over and gave the corpse a kick for good measure as it started to melt into darkness.

"Well, that was therapeutic." Marluxia sighed, dismissing his scythe with a flurry of petals.

"I've wanted to do that to that snob since the day I met him!" Xigbar laughed, and then looked around the room with a puzzled look on his face. "Hey, is it getting darker in here?"

Zexion was holding his head in both hands and shaking it back and forth. "An illusion of my death, to fool them into thinking they'd killed me… that's such a better idea…"

A buzzer went off somewhere in the cluttered back of the lab and all the dimmed lights went back up to normal. A metal door along the wall ground open and Vexen walked out, grimacing and tugging snappishly at his cloak. He glared at them all as he walked back to the group.

"That was quite painful, you know." He snapped. "It takes a lot of energy to transfer my consciousness to another replica, so try not to destroy this one as quickly."

Axel was the only one of the group not staring in shock at this latest turn, and he slipped around Vexen and stuck his head into the metal door. "Woah! There must be about a hundred Vexen's in here! How is there even a room this big in this castle?"

"I've needed something to do for the last year and a quarter." Vexen said, rushing over and pulling Axel out of the room. "And you most of all are not allowed in here. Get!"

"Wait, wait, wait." Xigbar interrupted. "I don't get it. If nothing really devastating happened to you, why did you stay cooped up in here since you were killed?"

Vexen shoved Axel into Luxord and turned to look at him. "One, I like my work. Two, there's a limit to the range on the transferring consciousness procedure. And third, it was the Superior's plan all along. We conspired to hide me away incase anything unfortunate happened to me so that I could continue my research in relative peace. It has been fun watching each of you get what's been coming to you on the monitors, but I suppose you expect me to take orders from one of you now."

"Yes, I do." Larxene sighed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She opened them and glared hard enough to peal paint at everyone in the room. "Meeting in the viewing room in five minutes. I'll hunt down and kill anyone who doesn't show up."

Darkness pooled at her feet as she opened a quick corridor around her, vanishing from the room in a whisper of power.

* * *

One by one, either by dark corridor or walking in through the door, the remaining members of the Organization made their way to the viewing room. Larxene was already there when the first arrived. She was perched on the edge of a couch, resting her chin on the back of her laced together fingers and leaning forward over her lap. She had stopped into her room to dry herself off and had slipped on a new cloak. Demyx was belted to a shoulder harness and looked quite content to remain there for now, while Zexion was curled up in the far corner, massaging his temples.

Larxene didn't look up as each member arrived, nor made any outward acknowledgement of their arrival. She just stared violently at the floor as they turned up and slid quietly to a seat. They had each been around Larxene long enough to recognize the mood she was in and no one wanted to be the one to attract her attention and die first.

The silence stretched on uncomfortably for a few minutes before Larxene's shoulders suddenly slumped. She heaved a huge sigh and looked around the room with resignation in her eyes. "None of us actually died, did we?" she asked softly.

"That's ridiculous!" Xigbar scoffed. "I watch everyone kick the bucket. I've been alone for the last three month…"

"Look around you!" Larxene interrupted, gesturing first at Demyx and then at Axel. "You've found no one because almost everyone has been incapacitated or in hiding. But we are alive, and I'm willing to bet that the others are all alive as well."

"But that doesn't make any sense." Zexion put in softly, twisting his fingers. "When a nobody is killed, they disappear. We know this for a fact."

"Well, that might not be entirely correct." Vexen said, and everyone spun sharply in their seats to look at him. "We know that a normal nobody will disappear once its form has been destroyed, but we aren't normal nobodies. We each have a primal element that is holding us each together and from what I've been able to discern, when we meet our end we dissolve back into our elements. Rather than vanish, we become what we are inside."

"Sounds like we've cleaned our clocks either way." Luxord said, not bothering to hide his doubt.

"Well, apparently not." Vexen scoffed. "We didn't know what would happen when an advanced nobody dies, we only suspected. It's not like any of us we're killed before this. Clearly, whatever it is about us that allowed us to retain our personalities after our first deaths continues to affect us during all our subsequent destructions."

"So you mean we're immortal!" Demyx shouted excitedly, bouncing up and down in his sheath.

"I don't think it works quite like that." Marluxia said thoughtfully. "There's no guarantee that we'd regain our human forms after we dissolve into our elements. And the only ones of us who made it out with our powers mostly intact are those who took steps to keep their original bodies whole. We might come back after dying, but probably weaker than a dusk. Although if we could somehow not fuse with our elements after dying, got cut off from them somehow…"

A strange image popped into Larxene's head, of her lying in a vast darkness where no light, or lightning, could reach her. She shook her head to dispel the image and clapped her hands. "Focus, people! It doesn't matter why we're alive at this point, what matters is that the others are likely alive as well. We need to find them."

"Why not? The more the merrier!" Axel laughed sarcastically. "What makes you think they'd want to come back? Surely they would have if they were out there."

"Did you come back?" Zexion spat venomously, then visibly tried to rein himself in. "Who is left?"

Luxord started to tick off on his fingers. "First there's the Superior, obviously. Then number five, number seven, number thirteen, number three… oh, and number fourteen. Can't forget her."

"Number fourteen?" Larxene asked. "There wasn't a fourteen. There were only the thirteen of us."

"Her name was Xion." Vexen said in a bored voice. "I have plenty of notes on her in my lab. Apparently, she was a replica I made of number thirteen that could also wield the keyblade. Her powers had something to do with memories, so I'm not surprised that her passing might not be remembered by most of you."

"I... vaguely recall a girl…" Axel muttered thoughtfully, scratching his hair. "But if she was only a replica, would she have been able to come back like the rest of us?"

"I doubt it." Vexen sniffed. "My replicas _are_ real nobodies, but they are more on the Samurai level than like us. My research tells me that she was a fluke and might have achieved her own element somewhere along the line, but the odds of a mere replica reviving are astronomical."

"Could you build a new one?" Larxene asked. The thought of having another girl in the Organization was an appealing thought.

Vexen gaped at her. "_Make a new one?_ Do you have any idea what it takes to create a duplicate when I don't have a sample to work with? And she was a fluke! I couldn't hope to reconstruct her personality!"

"You mentioned that she had gained an element." Demyx warbled, trying to be helpful. "What if you had a bit of whatever she turned into?"

"How would that help?" Vexen cried, exasperated. "Leave the science to those of us with a brain. Even if that could possibly have worked, where would you find any?"

"I have some." Xigbar piped in. Everyone turned and looked at him in confusion.

"Why… would you have some?" Marluxia asked slowly.

"I needed a new mirror." He laughed, enjoying the looks on their faces. "I had snuck along to watch when Roxas destroyed her. Long story, I'm not going to go into it now. Anyway, she broke into all these little pieces of glass which were floating up right to where I was, so on a whim I grabbed as many as I could. Come on, I'll show you!"

He stood and opened a dark corridor in the center of the room. He motioned for them to follow and stepping into it. One by one they entered the portal and emerged into a dank, wooden living space. The view out a rather large window revealed them to be in Port Royal. There were a couple of chairs and a table in the room, but they were all covered in socks, crumpled newspapers, and beer bottles.

"Home sweet home." Xigbar chuckled, motioning them to a long hall at the other end of the room. "I've got the whole floor to myself. Come on, she's down here." He led them down the hall to a large hanging mirror set into a round frame made of dark wood.

"Watch this: Xion, Xion, on the wall. Who's the coolest dude of all?" Xigbar crowed, and then laughed at the expressions on his guests faces. "Just kidding, there's no one in there. I was just lucky that I could gather so many of the shards, because when I started putting them together they fused seamlessly!"

Axel had been wearing a strange look on his face ever since he had heard Xion's name. He stepped to the front of the group and reached out his hand. "So you're sure she's…" he started.

As soon as his fingers touched the glass, however, the whole mirror shook on its frame and the reflection suddenly went dark. The image of a young, black haired girl wearing an Organization robe appeared and pressed her hands against the other side of the glass.

"Axel!" Xion breathed pleadingly. "It's really you! You have to get me out of here!"


	10. V

V

Axel's entire body bent sharply backwards as if an electrical current had surged through him and his eyes went wide. He held the pose for a few stunned seconds before pulling his hands back and sinking to his knees.

"Xi-Xion…" he stuttered softly, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes. "I remember… how could I…"

Xion had her hands pressed against her side of the mirror, a small stream of relieved tears slipping down her cheeks. She wiped them away on her sleeves and looked around the group hopefully. "Where's Roxas?"

"We're working on it, honey." Larxene said, reaching toward the glass herself. "Can you get out of there, or are we going to have to…"

Her fingers brushed the surface of the mirror and her mind… went white. She supposed she had lost a few seconds just like Axel had, but that was just a fleeting thought before the sudden appearance of three weeks' worth of memories. It was like suddenly discovering that a pothole in your driveway you had never consciously noticed before had been filled in. Images of a little, quiet nobody who always wore her hood up flashed through her mind and settled into place as if they had always been there.

"Oh." She said thoughtfully. "You're that quiet one. Looks like you've been improving on your vocabulary since I saw you last. And on a side note, _what the hell just happened to my mind?_"

"_Your mind? What just happened to my mirror?_" Xigbar shouted, just as concerned.

"We did mention that her original powers seemed to be memory based." Luxord said in that _infuriatingly_ smug tone of his. "When she passed, everyone who currently remembered her lost all knowledge of her existence. It appears that touching her mirror has returned you memories of her."

"But how do you remember her? You haven't touched it yet." Demyx asked.

"I did say _currently,_ didn't I?" Luxord smirked. "Do you intend to spend the entire hand on the floor, Axel?"

Axel blinked at him for a second, and then rose to his feet in a rush. He coughed self-consciously into his fist and shuffled his hair. "It's, uh, good to see you again, kid. It's been far too long since our last chat. What do you say we get you out of this place?"

Xion beamed and nodded eagerly. "OK!"

"No, seriously!" Xigbar shouted, shoving Axel out of the way and glaring at his non-reflection. "How long have you been in there? Why haven't you shown yourself before?"

"Because I don't like you!" Xion spat, sticking her tongue out at his surprised expression. "You were never nice to me back in the Organization. And besides, you are always getting drunk and walking around… without you cloak…"

"I can see how that might have been a big problem." Larxene grinned mischievously.

Xion blushed furiously and smiled back. "Not a big as you might think, actually…"

"OK, and we're done talking to the magic mirror!" Xigbar declared loudly, taking the mirror down and turning it to face the wall. Xion's objections were muffled by the angle. "So, who do we try to find next? Xaldin? Saix? I know where-"

"Shouldn't we try to get her out of there first?" Zexion interrupted, staring intently at the back of the mirror.

"Why do you care so much?" Xigbar asked, eyeing him.

"I know how it feels to be trapped and unable to escape." He said softly, continuing to stare intently at the back of the mirror. An awkward silence stretched over the group.

Axel scratched his cheek and coughed again to break the silence. "Hey, never knew you had a soft spot!" he said with forced cheerfulness, and reached out to put an arm around the boy. His arm passed through the illusion and he fell onto his face.

"Wh-what?" Axel stammered, clutching his slightly bleeding nose. "Zexion's a ghost?"

"More like a bad dream." Larxene chuckled. "I bet Vexen knows how to get her out of there. I'm more surprised he hasn't already bored us with the details yet."

She looked around the room and frowned. "Hey, where is he?"

The others looked around, but the chilly academic was nowhere to be seen. And he wasn't the only one.

* * *

"I thought you left with the others." Vexen muttered, looking back over his shoulder at the nobody who had followed him into his lab. Marluxia slid his hand along the edge of one of the lab tables, toying with the stoppers on several vials before moving on. The scientist simmered, waiting impatiently for his question to be answered, but to no avail. He opened his mouth to berate him again, but Marluxia spoke first.

"There were a couple of questions I had hoped to ask you." he said, lifting up a beaker filled with a lime green liquid and giving it a small shake. "But I must say I'm more surprised you didn't join the excursion. You were ever the curious one of the group."

Vexen swallowed his heated retort and held out his hand for the beaker. "Please don't shake that. This is a new body and it's still fragile."

Marluxia obligingly put the vial back in its place and waited for Vexen to continue.

Vexen sneered and looked away. "I mentioned that there was a limit to the distance my devices could transfer my memories. Well, at the moment, other worlds are out of its range. A preemptive measure that the original Vexen keyed in so that I couldn't just abandon him in the freezer."

"But that logic is only applicable if you think your replica is in danger." Marluxia said, smiling softly. "The Vexen I remember wasn't a fighter, but when it was thrust upon him, he was a master of defense. Do you not think you could protect yourself? Or… perhaps there's more locked away from you…"

They matched unblinking glares for nearly a minute, and it was Vexen who turned away first. "All right! I can't form my shield! The original prevented all his replicas from being able to call upon it, along with most of my control over ice! Presumably so that I'd be trapped here, unable to venture forth without the fear of destruction, until I cured him!"

"That's quite a tearful story." Marluxia purred, narrowing his eyes and smiling in silent triumph.

Vexen glared at him and snubbed up his nose. "Did you have some purpose in coming here other than to bask in my misfortune?"

"I said I had a few questions for you." Marluxia said, stepping closer confidently. "I wanted to know more about the experiments you ran before your work on replicas. Before I joined the Organization."

"What in specific? I worked on a lot of projects." Vexen huffed, trying to sound like he was uninterested. But the glint in his eyes gave him away, and Marluxia smiled wider.

"Your dissections of dusks," he said, "and your experiments with giving a nobody a replacement heart. And anything you know about how a heart absorbs darkness…"

* * *

"Whatever those two want to talk about, I don't like it." Larxene growled, opening a corridor back to the castle. "Come on, Vexen at least is probably in his lab…"

"Probably?" Xigbar asked, a strange look passing over his face. "You were able to find me pretty fast. Can't you tell where they are?"

"Pff, I wish I could." Larxene huffed offhandedly. "Luxord, you carry XIV."

"Why him?' Axel asked, eyeing the gambler as he picked up the frame.

"Because she knows I'd be the least likely to damage it." Luxord hummed, carefully tucking the mirror in the crook of his arm. "Couldn't stand the bad luck, you know."

He stepped into the swirling darkness and was swept away. Larxene followed after him, bracing herself for the worst the darkness could dish out. It wasn't enough. She exited the corridor panting as if she had run for miles and clutching at the zipper of her cloak. She covered her moment of weakness by glaring around the room at those nearby. Marluxia was walking out of Vexen's lab, a cheerful smile on his face that only caused her aggravation to grow.

"This is the mirror?" he asked, walking over to Luxord with his arms outstretched to take it for a closer look.

Larxene beat him to the mirror and snatched it away from his grasping fingers. "Not so fast, half-pint. First I want to know why you-"

"Hey, does anyone else hear that?" Demyx interrupted, tilting his head back to hear better.

The rest of the group paused to listen as Axel and Xigbar stepped out from the corridor, letting it close behind them. Larxene was about the backhand Demyx for interrupting her when she did hear something. It was incredibly soft at first, coming from outside and thus muffled by the castle walls, but growing louder every second. It sounded almost like someone… screaming…

"Oh no…" Zexion said softly. He grabbed his head in both hands and sank to his knees. "Oh no… not again… I thought it was over… not again…"

"Hey, calm down little man." Xigbar chuckled, waving his hand in front of Zexion's eyes, but he hardly seemed to notice. He began to rock back and forth, still mumbling to himself.

"No… no… no… it can't be… no…"

"Dude's lost it." Xigbar nodded, confident in his medical opinion. "So what is that screaming, anyway? I think it's coming up from up the hole in the floor."

"Oh, that's just…" Vexen started, but was startled quiet as Zexion began screaming.

"Make it stop! Make it stop!" he bellowed. Light started playing around his upper body, rolling off his skin in waves. The ripping energy coursed through the air around him, twisting from one color to the next rapidly. "MAKE IT STOP!"

"Whoa whoa, calm down…" Marluxia said cautiously, moving closer and gesturing calmly with his palms. One of the swirl of energy lashed out as he got too close, taking him off his feet and flipping his end over end into the wall next to the lab.

"NOOOO MOOOORRREEE!" Zexion screamed, the words tearing themselves from his chest, and his pent up power exploded. Dizzying lights arced away from him and spread to all corners of the room. Images, most likely dredged from his memories, started playing along the walls as it the hallway had become a movie theater.

One blast took Luxord from his knees as he tried to jump out of the way to the side. He instinctively threw out his arms to catch himself, causing the mirror to tumble from his grasp. The kaleidoscope of light reflected oddly off the glass as it tumbled over the gaping hole in the floor.

"Xion!" Axel yelled, rushing forward. He bobbed and weaved around oscillating energy streams to reach the lip of the hole and dived off. Larxene didn't see what happened next, as she was too busy dodging and flipping over streams of energy herself. And above all the chaos, the original, strangely familiar sound that had started it all grew louder and louder.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA_AAAAAAAAAAAAAA__**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-**_"

"Larxene!" Marluxia shouted from where he lay prone, trying to present as small a target as possible. "You are the only one who can touch him! You have to make him stop!"

_Easy for you to say, _Larxene thought savagely, _most of these would pass over your head!_ She focused her attention on the center of the swirling vortex and concentrated on it. There was a pattern under the bedlam and she adapted her movements to take maximum advantage from it. She _swam_ though the air towards Zexion, none of the eddies of power even coming close to touching her. There were times when it was good to know she was the fastest of them all.

There was a pulsating cocoon of light playing around Zexion's form that caused her pause for a moment, but a brief interruption in the web offered her an opportunity. She snaked her hand though it and pressed her palm against his forehead.

"You've needed this since the moment I found you." She breathed. Then she poured lightning directly into his head.

Zexion back arched painfully into the current as every cell in his body tried to get as far away from the pain as they could. His spastic chanting died into silence and his throat constricted and he bit the tip off his tongue. The illusions running rampant around the room spun in a fever pitch, but froze in place the instant Zexion finally lost consciousness. They held their place for a few strained seconds before fading away into afterimages.

""Whew… did everyone weather that?" Larxene asked, barely breathing hard as she surveyed the room. Marluxia, Luxord and Xigbar lay crumpled against the walls on opposite sides of the hallway. Xigbar offered her a rude gesture that would have made her very angry in she wasn't still riding the high of her victory. Vexen peeked around the corner of his lab's doorway and raised an eyebrow at the devastation.

"Whoa, look at that!" Demyx hollered, looking down over the edge of the hole. At some point, he must have flown from his sheath. Larxene stepped over the broken tile to the hole and looked over.

About two floors down, Axel clung to the lip of the hole with the tips of his left hand. His right arm was curled around Xion's mirror in a death grip. But it wasn't the precariously hanging nobody that held her attention. Outside of the castle, framed through the hole, was a steadily receding mass of darkness. The mass rolled and heaved as it fell away and the screaming she had been hearing could definitely be heard coming from it.

"_**-**__AAAAAAAAAAAA_AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa…"

"What is that?" She wondered aloud, straining her eyes to get a better view before it disappeared.

"As I was about to say before number six had his fit," Vexen sniffed, stepping out from his lab, "that's Lexeaus. This marks the thirty-seventh time he's fallen past the castle. I've been tracing his progress to find out the relative depth to the…"

He paused as he took in the incredulous looks everyone was directing his way. "What? Should I have mentioned it earlier?"


	11. I

I

Several minutes later, once everyone had picked themselves up and brushed themselves down, all eight nobodies stood around the edge of the fissure and stared down into the abyss. Well, five nobodies, a replica, a liquid quaver, and a mirror, anyway. Zexion was still unconscious.

"…How are we going to get him?" Marluxia wondered aloud.

"Do we need to get him?" Vexen asked.

"At this point, for the sake of completion." Larxene grumbled, before glaring up at the scientist. "And by the way, yes, you should have mentioned this earlier!"

"How was I supposed to know you didn't already know about him?" Vexen said defiantly. "You seem to have discovered everyone else's whereabouts just fine!"

"Not on purpose! And why haven't you done anything, if you've known about him for all this time?"

"I was interested in finding out the relative depth of the void, if you were listening earlier. This seemed a fine experiment for the purpose and all I had to do was allow events to unfold on their own."

"And you're curiosity didn't include how this happened to him?"

"One experiment at a time, my dear Larxene. There was much I could learn from this situation before it required any action on my behalf."

"And if he didn't come back again? What of your experiment then?"

"He's done it thirty-seven times now, hasn't he? And since your meddling has caused me to miss this pass, you've set the experiment back nearly two weeks. I hope you're happy."

Larxene's daggers punching into his chest answered for her.

"You know, I think I'm going to get used to winning arguments this way." Larxene grinned, and turned her attention back to the abyss.

"Seriously though, are we going to try to rescue him?" Axel wondered.

Marluxia rubbed his palm across his chin thoughtfully. "He was always very diligent about his duties, loyal to a fault, and quite frankly the strongest of us all, physically. He would be a valuable asset to us if we could recover him. The only question is how…"

"And if he's still whole." Axel said, scratching his hair with his free hand. "I only caught a glimpse of him as I was hanging there, but he looked like a big blob of darkness."

"Actually, he's covered in a layer of heartless." Vexen lectured, stepping out from his lab and glaring daggers at Larxene. "I believe the Shadows are attempting to feed on his leaking darkness, though the fact we can still hear him vocalizing his denial proves that he's maintained his corporeal form, at least."

"Can't you open a dark corridor to him?" Xion asked, pressing her hands against the glass.

"Corridors require a flat surface to open upon." Luxord reminded her, before frowning and paying her more attention. "Oh dear, it seems you've cracked."

Xion blinked and looked down at herself. A large fracture split the bottom three or four inches of her mirror from the top, right across her abdomen. Another hairline fracture curved up from the crack over her right cheek, just missing eye before curling back to the frame. Her hands flew to her mouth in horror at the sight.

"When did this happen?" Axel asked, staring at the break with no less dismay.

"Probably when you threw all you chips into the pot and dived after her." Luxord said, walking over to them and reaching out to take her. He paused at the last second and seemed to rethink his actions, pulling his hands back sharply. "Better not risk the bad luck. Come now; let's see if we can't put your pretty poker face back together. I can't stand to see a damaged looking glass…"

"I suppose we could fly after Lexeaus in a gummi ship." Demyx suggested after those three had left. "Um… do we have any gummi ships?"

"I have no idea." Larxene shrugged. "With the corridors, I never thought I'd need one again."

"Hmm…dived… you could dive down after him…" Marluxia mused, still lost in thought.

""And catch up with him how?" Larxene shot him an exasperated look. "I don't see you leaping off the ledge."

"Perhaps if we had a really long rope…"

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Xigbar shouted, exasperated. He took a step to the left of the universe and vanished from the room.

* * *

It took Xigbar several hops to get his bearings straight, but within moments he stood upside –down in the inky darkness, peering down at the approaching living meteor between his legs. He summoned both his needle guns into his hands and waited until just before the mass would have barreling into him before leaping aside.

"Yah-haha ha!" He crowed, spinning in a tight spiral and holding down both triggers. A seemingly endless barrage of glowing darts flew from the barrels and, regardless of the direction they had been fired from, curved in on their targets. Each dart slammed home in a shadows chest, blasting them into nothingness. After nearly half a minute of continuous barrage, Lexeaus's body was finally cleared of the parasitic creatures.

Xigbar cocked his guns in salute and allowed them to fade away. He teleported after the falling body and caught his heavy frame over his shoulder. Before the excess weight could knock him spiraling away, he twisted space and they were gone.

* * *

"Now where did he go off to?" Larxene asked, right before Xigbar reappeared in a swirl of his element. He staggered slightly under the weight of his burden and allowed Lexeaus to slide off his shoulders. The others spread out a bit, giving the big man room to collapse.

Lexeaus stumbled to his knees, but caught himself on his arms. His clothing was in rags and he was breathing heavily, sweat clinging in a bright sheen on his skin. Surprisingly, he held the pose for a count of ten seconds, his eyes closed tight as if in concentration. A slight tremor ran through the ground, but that was all. He opened his eyes and slowly climbed to his feet.

He looked around the room, taking in their appearance and the state of the floor, and said, "Took you all long enough."

He brushed some soot from his sleeves and started for the stairway. "But thanks, anyways." He almost made it to the steps before Larxene broke out of her shock and grabbed him by the arm.

"Hey, wait!" she ordered. _Wow, I forgot how tall this guy was!_ "You… you can't just walk off without some kind of an explanation! What happened to you?"

He looked down at her raised his eyebrow. "I was falling. What did it look like?"

"That's… that's not what I meant!" Larxene sputtered. "What was…"

"You just need to ask in the right way." Marluxia said, walking over. He straightened his back, craned his neck way back to look Lexeaus in the eye, and spoke in a commanding tone. "Xemnas is gone and we are all that is left. Report, number Five."

Lexeaus stared down at him for a few seconds, and then looked up at the rest of them. Apparently coming to the conclusion that no one was playing a joke on him, he squared his shoulders and shuffled his tired frame into a ready posture.

"I challenged the real Riku to a fight and lost." He began. "He simply overpowered me in skill. I could feel myself coming apart, so I decided to unleash all the darkness within me in a last ditch effort to overwhelm the boy. I do not know if I was successful, but releasing my darkness gave me one last surge of strength. The ground below me was already trying to swallow my body into it, so I threw the last of my strength into tearing the earth away from me. That hole in the floor and in all the floors below are the result of that.

"Once I was free of the ground, my body stopped coming apart. But the darkness within me was still leaking out and it attracted the heartless. They came and tried to finish me in my weakness, but I fought them off and was able to draw some strength from each one I killed. I don't know how long it took, but eventually the void looped on itself and I found myself approaching the castle again. I landed on the cliff just outside out door and immediately could feel my body start to disappear from contact with the ground. I threw myself over the ledge and have been falling ever since."

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared them each down in turn. "Now I am going to find a bed and sleep." He turned and made it six steps before collapsing on his face. This might have been more concerning of he didn't immediately start snoring loudly.

"Well…" Marluxia blinked. "I'm not sure what to make of all that, but he seems to be fine."

Larxene was trying unsuccessfully to suppress giggles. "I'm sorry, but I almost couldn't pay attention with you standing next to him. You barely come up to his knee!" She, Luxord, and Xigbar broke down into laugher. Marluxia crossed his arms and waited for them to stop, glowering all the while.

Larxene heaved on last sigh and looked up. "Alright, now that the giant is back with us, I have just one question. Just throwing it out there to avoid any more confusion in the future. Does anyone else know where any of the missing members are?"

Everyone shrugged save for Xigbar, who seemed to be deciding something. "Well…" the sharpshooter started.

* * *

Xigbar's dark corridor opened to a mostly barren, wooden room. Larxene was glad that the room was only barely lit, as this trip through the darkness had left her with quite the headache. She looked up as Marluxia and Luxord walked in behind her, pulling along a very reluctant Vexen.

"I said that I would rather remain in my lab!" Vexen protested, struggling in their grasp. "I have some very time sensitive projects that I simply can't be torn away from. At least leave the corridor open for me. Where are we, anyway?"

Larxene tuned him out and looked around the room. I was sparsely furnished, with only a low desk without an accompanying chair on the other side of the room. There were two doors, one which appeared to lead further in the building behind the desk and another by a large picture window on the other side of the room. A figure in a black cloak was standing at the window, facing away from them.

Xigbar looked at the rest of the group over his shoulder and approached the figure. He gave a slight bow at the waist before addressing him. "I told you they'd be here soon." he said with a surprising amount of respect.

The figure turned around and Larxene realized that he wasn't standing; he was floating. And that the cloak was far, _far_ too big on him. Despite preparing herself for almost anything after all her experiences so far, she still had a hard time believing what her eyes were telling her.

"I see they have." The figure said, floating closer. "So, we meet again. Kupo."


	12. VII

VII

"Is that… Xemnas?" Larxene gasped. The mention of the name sent several sharp glances from her to the moogle floating towards the group.

"What? No!" the moogle said, crossing his little arms and floating to a stop. "It's me, Poxuk!"

The group stared at him in mutual silence for a minute.

"…Who?" Marluxia asked.

"Poxuk!" the moogle repeated. "You know, the moogle!"

'Um… what moogle?" Vexen frowned.

"Hi, Poxuk!" Demyx warbled.

"Number XV!" Poxuk pouted, stamping his foot on the air.

"Poxuk, you were never given a real number." Xigbar said with a practiced sigh.

"I should have been!"

Larxene covered her eyes with her palm and counted to five. "Xigbar, start explaining before I start stabbing."

"Oh, right! I forgot you guys wouldn't remember him." Xigbar said, slapping his forehead. "Not long after you guys disappeared, we invited a moogle into the group. He mostly stayed in the meeting room and sold us stuff. He's not really a member of the Organization, but I thought you'd want to meet him anyway."

"I am too a member, kupo!" the moogle shouted. "I survived my demise with my memories and personality intact and received powers from it. That means I'm a part of the team whether you all admit it or not!"

"So if he's not the Superior…" Marluxia asked, "Why were you bowing to him a minute ago? I've never seen you that respectful before."

Xigbar scratched his cheek, embarrassed. "Well… uh… remember how I said the first thing I did when I got better was race to the treasury? Well… I didn't win the race."

"And I own him!" Poxuk declared. "At least until he can find a way to pay back his gambling debt, with incurring interest of course, kupo. I was the only one up and able to clear out the castle when you all were gone, so now everything belongs to me. But it can be yours again, for a price."

"Where did you think I got all our old furniture from?" Xigbar shrugged.

"Is he… is he wearing Xemnas's cloak?" Larxene asked, still confused by this turn of events.

"How does it look on me, kupo?" Poxuk said, giving the cloak a little twirl. "I did say I got everything from the castle."

"Wait, I think I'm missing something here." Vexen interrupted, stepping forward curiously. "You are a nobody? What is your element?"

"I control the elemental power of… money, kupo!" Poxuk declared proudly.

"But that isn't a real element!" Vexen scoffed, sneering down his nose at the moogle. "What can you do with it; tax your enemies to death?"

Poxuk huffed and held his hand out before him. A bright light started coalescing into his palm and exploded outward, revealing a small calculator with the Organization's symbol etched on the back. He pointed it over his shoulder towards the door leading further into the building and pressed some buttons. The door bulged and burst open, slammed nearly off its hinges by the tide of munny that spilled through from the other side of the vault.

Marluxia had the misfortune to be standing closest to the vault and disappeared under the glittering tide. "Why is munny so sharp!" he screamed, trying unsuccessfully to batter his way out.

Larxene and Xigbar leapt clear of the stream of metal, but it wasn't interested in them. The tide followed Vexen relentlessly as the scientist tried to run from it. He was cut off from the open corridor immediately and soon was pressed back into a corner. The pile of munny loomed up above him, the diamond tips of each piece glittering sharply, but a few taps of Poxuk's calculator froze the pile in place.

"Well?" he asked smugly, tapping his weapon on his elbow in his crossed arms. "Do you think munny is an element now?"

"I… believe you are capable of holding you own in a fight…" Vexen muttered, shaken.

A few more taps of his calculator sent the pile of munny flowing back into the vault. "It can also alter the flow of prices and markets in any world I'm in, kupo. I have complete control over any economy I wish. How else do you think I could keep my stores fresh and always stocked? Plus, every potion you lot purchased from me made me stronger and stronger, kupo!"

"He always talked like this, too." Demyx said, shaking his head back and forth. "Ah, good times, good times…"

"Well, at least he's not Xemnas…" Larxene chuckled. "When I saw the cloak, I thought…"

"Unlikely." Vexen huffed, pressing the wrinkles from his cloak and trying to regain his dignity. "Xemnas's element was nothing, so if he was destroyed and fused with his element, he would have become nothing. It's impossible for his to return like the rest of us."

"Yep, he is definitely dead" Xigbar nodded.

"No way he's coming back." Poxuk agreed.

"…Urg…" Zexion groaned, starting to wake up.

"Defintely dead." Marluxia stated firmly.

"And never coming back." Larxene said. _Though I'll believe it when I see it._

* * *

"Now where has that pack rat hidden it away…" Luxord hummed to himself, rummaging through the back of Vexen's lab. He lifted a strange blocky machine to the side and pressed deeper into the mess of old, discarded inventions.

"What are we looking for?" Axel asked, shifting Xion's mirror to a more comfortable grip under his arm.

"The device that created Xion's original body." Luxord answered, maneuvering through a tangle of wires hanging down from the ceiling.

Axel frowned and set the mirror down so he could help search. "But I thought that we couldn't clone a new body for her."

"No, we said we couldn't clone her from scratch. Aha!" Luxord lifted a shiny metal box free from the clutter and started making his way back out of the mess. "And that still stands true. But thankfully, we have a few aces in the hole."

He set the box on a mostly clear table and pressed a panel along the side. A hatch opened and ejected a metal cap attached to the innards of the machine by a tangle of wires. "The first thing in our favor is that this particular model relies on memories to create a clone. That's how he was able to make the Riku replica; after playing a few hands against the real Riku, he used his own memories of the battle as a base. The same process was used to create Xion. Vexen slipped the device onto Roxas's head as he slept his first night at the castle and his memories of Kairi were the strongest."

"How do you know all this?" Xion asked curiously, straining to see what was happening from her vantage point on the floor.

Luxord waved the question away as he continued adjusting the settings on a side panel. "Vexen's going to explain it all to me later this month, but that's not really important right now. As I was saying, we are lucky enough to have someone with cherished memories of you that we can hook up to the device right here." He slipped the helmet over Axel's head and struggled to press it down against his hair.

"But won't this just make a new body? How's it going to get Xion out of that mirror?" Axel asked nervously as the gambler locked the helmet into place.

"Vexen's memory transfer device." Luxord answered calmly, flipping a switch on the device. "We simply need to appropriate it for a few minutes and we can shuffle her from one to the other. Now as I was saying, the other card up our sleeve is…"

Whatever he had been about to say was cut short as the device gave a hiccup and belched a small cloud of black smoke into the air. A surge of feedback coursed through the helmet directly into Axel's head and he arched back, clamping his hands over it. In his blind attempt to dislodge the wires from his spiky hair, he jerked savagely on the wires and pulled the machine from the table.

Xion could only look on in horror as the box smashed into her mirror just below her face. Glass shattered and scattered all over the floor. The sharp sound brought Axel back to his senses and he cast a horrified look at the ruin spread across the floor.

"No!" Axel cried, falling to his knees and starting to scoop up the shards.

"Oh my… that's worth seven years…" Luxord mumbled, looking on with interest. "…but I don't remember this…"

"Oh no! This is horrible!" Xion shouted, hands cupped over her mouth.

Luxord and Axel blinked and turned slowly around at the sound of her voice. Xion's image was now coming off the shiny side of the cloning device on the floor. The fact that she was fine seemed to occur to her at the same time and she gasped, looking around her wildly.

"No, I definitely don't remember this." Luxord said to himself, suddenly very serious. "How did you get over there?"

"I... don't know." Xion said, blinking rapidly and reaching a hand out tentatively to the side of the box. "I saw the box falling towards me and I flinched away. I felt like I was falling for a second and then I was… here. There's something here…"

Xion reached the end of the box and stepped past it, disappearing from sight. The two nobodies gasped but she reappeared on the table to the side where she had walked towards, reflected off of the side of a large beaker.

"Hey, I think I can walk from one to another!" Xion said happily, clapping her hands together. "I'm free!"

"Of a sort." Luxord said in a calculative tone, running a hand under his chin and kneeling down to look at the replica device. "Looks a little damaged, but I'm sure our erstwhile mad scientist will be able to repair it. Speaking of which, you should move about two feet to your right."

Axel frowned but was in no state of mind to disobey. No sooner had he moved before a dark corridor opened where he had been standing and the rest of the Organization stepped out from it. None of them appeared to want to talk about what they had seen and the three weren't really all that surprised by the moogle who was now with them.

Xigbar looked around at the mess and blew out a breath between his teeth. "What, did you and poppet have a little fight?"

"I'm just fine!" Xion said, eager to show off her new abilities. Currently, she was reflected off the glass cover of one of Vexen's cloning tubes.

"OK, fine. Whatever." Larxene said calmly. _Really, is there anything that will surprise me anymore?_ "Anyway, I think it's time Vexen had a look at the portal stones and found a way to make them work again."

"It would be faster to just create new ones after what you tell me has happened to them." Vexen sneered, folding his arms over his chest.

"Then get to work." Larxene ordered, stalking from the room. "Make it your top priority or whatever. As for me, I believe that the giant had the right idea. It has been a long, _long_ day."

* * *

In the end, it took Vexen nearly a day to create a pair of devices to track their missing members. Xaldin's signal was coming from Beast's Castle, to no one's surprise, so Vexen, Luxord, Xigbar, and a newly awakened Lexeaus were sent off to retrieve him. They departed via dark corridor immediately, leaving the rest of them to ponder over the remaining device. Which led them…

"How the heck can he be up in the sky?" Larxene demanded, craning her neck back and looking up.

They were standing in a huddled group in an alleyway in the shadow of the Castle That Never Was. Larxene clutched the scanner in her fist and, no matter which way she shook it or how many times they circled the back streets, it kept pointing upwards.

"Maybe he's gained the ability to fly?" Axel suggested. Larxene might have hit him if the idea was any less ridiculous than the explanation she was anticipating.

It took the six nobodies only a few moments at most to raid one of the air-hangers dotting the strange city and steal a heartless' gummi ship. Marluxia quickly figured out the simplistic controls and they were soon airborne. It quickly became apparent after ten minutes of flight that the scanner was leading them to the moon, the heart shaped ruin that had almost been their Kingdom Hearts. Nobody talked as Marluxia maneuvered the craft across the glowing pink crevice in the center of the moon and onward to the darker side.

He found a clear space as the scanned indicated they were close and set the ship down. The area around them glowed dimly in the ambient light. It appeared like the surface of a normal moon, all grey sand and grey rocks. One by one, the nobodies disembarked and looked around the empty plain.

"Xion, you stay with the ship." Larxene call over her shoulder as she stepped off the landing platform.

"Oh, ha ha." Xion huffed, putting her hands on her hips and glaring down from the side of the windshield.

"But there's nothing here." Demyx said, disappointment dripping from his tone and he looked this way and that from his perch.

"There's something over there." Zexion said, pointing off into the near distance. "It's the only shape I can see for miles in any direction anyway."

With no better leads they set off, hiking their way over the uneven terrain. As they neared the area Zexion had spotted, they started noticing small piles of stones that seemed to have been stacked together. Soon the piles of rocks were everywhere, and every here and there collected into somewhat even rows. They topped a small rise and halted in their tracks.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Larxene sighed.

The piles of stones were laid out in a circular pattern in the clearing before them, arranged around a large boulder that had been carved into the rough shape of a throne. A figure sat slumped in the throne, but perked up as they appeared over the rise. His cloak was in rags, torn bits and ripped cloth barely clinging to his limbs. Neither of his eyes was staring in the same direction and a crude circlet made of stone lay about his messed-up hair. He hopped down from his seat and gestured majestically around him.

"Welcome. To my kingdom!" Saix shouted grandly, doing a little twirl so that his outstretched arms encompassed all.

* * *

_AN - I have a few apologies to make. Here goes._

_First, sorry for leading you all on about Xemnas. The moogle never had a number of his own and since I never planned on Xemnas returning... Well, the number was free. Then again, I'm not very sorry about this one. All your expressions were awesome._

_Second, I just noticed that the website has been removing the page breaks I use. Apparently, *** doesn't get translated over when I upload a chapter. So if you don't know when I'm making a scene change, the story is kinda hard to follow. Sorry about that, I'll go through them in a couple days and replace the missing breaks._

_And thirdly, sorry for not uploading for so long. I've had to spend some time on several other stories and projects I've been working on, such as my other Kingdom Hearts story "Dark Chain". What's that? You haven't read "Dark Chain" yet? Well go! Read it now!_


	13. III

III

"Are you sure you're reading that thing right?" Xigbar grumbled, kicking a loose stone over the side of the bridge. "We've been at this for almost two hours now. He's not here."

"He is here!" Vexen snarled back, squinting at the tiny view screen on the scanner. "My device can't be misled. If there is anything left of Number III, then it is here. We just keep missing it."

After transferring to Beast's Castle, they had started their search in the manor itself. Their initial findings, however, led them to believe that Xaldin was located outside. Soon after that the scanner stopped giving them any useful directions and they searched fruitlessly through the courtyard and drawbridge. Having no better idea, they forayed into the castle again and combed through the labyrinth of catacombs beneath it, but still they came up short. Presently, they were gathered about the bridge where Luxord and Xigbar had claimed he had met his end.

"You don't think your little gizmo is just a little confused because of how often he's been here?" Xigbar muttered, kicking another pebble over the edge into the howling chasm and watching it fall.

"Pah!" Vexen exclaimed and stalked off to the other side of the bridge.

Xigbar ignored him and looked at the other two members of the team. Luxord was slowly pacing the other end of the bridge with his head down and Lexeaus was standing ramrod straight at the closed gates at the far end, looking out into the forest. Deciding which one he'd rather talked with, he stuck his hand in his pockets and strolled over to the gambler.

"So… you think this is just a waste of _time?_" he asked, leaning over into his line of sight.

"Nothing is a waste of time." Luxord said distractedly and shook his head. "He's here somewhere, we just have to find where."

"Don't you already know where he is or something?" Xigbar sighed, bored with this whole assignment and ready to call it quits.

Luxord shook his head, the wind coming up from the chasm lifting up his hood for a moment. "Before I can know something ahead of time, I have to experience it ahead of time. None of my future selves have mentioned how exactly Xaldin was found, only that he was."

"Could the two of you kindly stop you're gossiping and get back to work?" Vexen demanded crossly, stomping over to them in frustration. The wind kicked up and blew his long hair all about his face. "Gah! Curse this wind-swept place! The sooner I can get out of here the better."

Xigbar turned and started a smart comeback, but paused as a sudden thought crossed his mind. "Hey… was it this windy back in the courtyard?"

The others stared at him as they pondered his question, the only sound the sharp whistling of the wind. As one they all slowly turned back to the chasm and looked down.

"I don't know how things usually work on this world," Vexen said slowly, "but doesn't wind not usually blow upwards?"

"There looks like a rockslide over there." Lexeaus said, appearing at their shoulders and pointing down at a spot near the bottom, next to the shadow of the bridge. With him leading and finding handholds for the rest, the four started climbing down the cliff side.

* * *

"We're over here." Larxene said.

Siax looked back over his shoulder and struck his pose again, arms spread wide. "I knew that! I was referring to the rest of my subjects!"

The silence stretched as the group looked slowly around the empty clearing. "Um… who are you talking about, Siax?" Axel said cautiously.

"Who is this Siax you speak of?" Number VII asked, leading forward and almost falling forward onto his face. "Are you talking to my personal servant? _Are you?_ He's never around when I need him…"

Siax's eyes unfocused for a second, then snapped forward and he grinned wolfishly. "You may call me… Purple! And who might you be?"

Larxene leaned over and down and whispered into Marluxia's ear. "_How_ long has he been up here?"

"Only a couple of months…" Marluxia returned, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"You!" Saix suddenly screamed, pointing his finger and rushing forward. "I remember… I remember you! Axles… Axe… Laxe… Lea… Leaxel! Leaxel, you traitorous dog! You dare return to despoil my kingdom like you did my last?" He launched himself forward and started swiping for all he was worth, trying to rip through his foe's face.

Zexion, of course, was unharmed by the assault "Wow, he's crazier than I am!" the schemer said, flinching as each blow passed through him.

"Guys, a word." Larxene said, motioning the rest of the group to follow her and huddle up a little bit away. "Okay, does anyone want to hazard a guess as to why he's loonier than the Mad Hatter vacationing in Halloween Town?"

"…His berserk state…" Marluxia muttered, and then looked up with a grin. "His powers wax and wane with the moon, and he always used to lose himself when they were at their fullest. Well, here on the moon itself his powers must be blaring at their fullest _all the time!_"

"So you're saying he's been drunk on power continuously for the last three months?" Zexion asked, doubt evident in his tone.

"It would certainly explain the whole king-of-the-moon bit." Axel chuckled, shaking his head. "I haven't seen him this out of control since before he was a nobody."

"Yeah, I never trusted the guy anyway." Saix whispered, huddling in closer to the group so that they wouldn't be overheard.

Everyone jumped back in surprise. "How did you get over here?" Zexion squeaked.

"Over where?" Siax shouted, jumping up in horror and looking around. "Don't worry, I know just where to go to get away from them. To the moooooooon!"

He pointed his finger dramatically into the air, managing to point to one of the only points in the sky that wasn't the world above them, and power started to collect around him. Light and darkness started flowing around him and came apart, vanishing into nothingness. Before anyone could react to his disintegration he reappeared a few feet away, facing the other direction.

"Whew, glad I got away in time!" He said, turning around and leaping back in shock. "Oh, didn't know I had any visitors! You look just like these guys I just left behind. What are your names?"

"Well… I have no idea what just happened." Marluxia muttered, for one of the few times in his life at a loss.

"Ah!" Demyx shouted, hopping up and out of his shoulder strap. "He jumped to the moon!"

Larxene grabbed him by the stem and lifted him up to eye level. "Listen, water boy, the grownups are discussing the crazy man. You can join in when you start making more sense than him."

"No, listen!" Demyx insisted. "Saix never left the Castle like the rest of us, right? And this World didn't have an actual moon until recently. So maybe he could always teleport to the moon, but never knew he could before! And once he got here, he became too crazy to figure out how to get back!"

Larxene opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. "That's… actually not a bad idea. Are you _alright_, Demyx?"

"Even if that is what happened," Marluxia cut in, evidently cross that some else had figured out the riddle, "How does that matter now? Is he even useful to us in this condition?"

"Why not? We keep you around." Larxene glanced back at Saix, who was engrossed in trying to eat a rather porous moon rock. "Maybe we can get Vexen to zap him with one of his evil machines to make him sane again. Or I could zap him until he gets better or it stops being funny. Either way, I want to get out of here. My boots are full of grit and I've had a headache since we landed on this mass of hearts. Think we can get him back to the ship without having to drag him?"

"I don't think that's going to be a problem." Axel grunted, starting to walk back to the ship.

"Where are you going, space mushroom?" Purple asked, hopping along after Axel and batting at his spikes while a jealous Zexion looked on. "Do you want to share my dinner?"

"Just… just get him to the ship." Larxene sighed. _I hope the others are doing better than we are…_

* * *

"So… what are we looking at?" Xigbar asked.

Lexeaus had flicked his hand and sent all the loose rocks along the chasm wall cascading away to reveal the sight before them. Freed from the stone, the form floated up a foot into the air and hovered. Up close the winds emanating from the body were powerful enough to nearly blow them from their feet. Xaldin's skin was nearly as transparent as glass and his eyes were rolled all the way back into his head.

"Fascinating." Vexen muttered. His hands played over Xaldin's form, plucking samples from Xaldin's cloak. "He appears to be semi-incorporeal, halfway between a state of nobody and scattered power. His translucent form is still emitting the source of his power, even through such time had already elapsed. Why, if I postulate about…"

"Professor!" Xigbar snapped, cutting of Vexen's rant before it could gain steam. "Save the lecture for the classroom. Just tell me why he hasn't vanished."

Vexen sneered and stood up, rising to his full height and staring down at him. "Perhaps he was buried enough beneath the rubble to be sufficiently shielded from his element. Perhaps his wounds weren't mortal and he's just in a coma. Perhaps there's a high concentration of salt in these stones and it cancels out his wind. How am I supposed to just magically know without performing any experiments?

"After all, we've never seen a top-class nobody disappear up close." Vexen murmured, looking thoughtfully back at the body. "This might be normal. Although I look forward to finding out…"

"Can he be moved?" Lexeaus asked, ever pragmatic.

Luxord reached under an armpit and hoisted Xaldin over his shoulder. "Looks like. I suggest we return." He opened a corridor with his free hand and stepped inside, Lexeaus and Xigbar hot on his heels. Vexen hopped about the site for a while, scooping dirt and small rocks into vials, but soon entered the corridor himself. In a swirl the opening was gone and the eerie castle was motionless again.

* * *

Larxene splashed more water over her brow and stared at her reflection in the mirror. "Okay… time to do this."

Before turning away from her reflection she reflexively tugged at the strip of cloth tightly bound across her chest. The material had been the sleeve of her old cloak which she had hacked off several days ago. She'd tied it over her heart and hadn't removed it since, fearful of a repeat of the shower incident. She also took a moment to revel in the fact she could feel fear again. _I still have no idea why I have a heart again, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. Of course, Vexen had better come up with some answers for me soon or I might start practicing my aim again…_

She tapped sharply on the glass and turned away, slipping her cloak over one shoulder and rolling it across to the other. In a moment Xion ducked into the glass and knocked back, cheerfully mimicking Larxene's serious stance.

Larxene eyed her and turned back to the mirror. "Gather up the others and tell them to meet me in the table room."

"Is it time?" Xion asked excitedly.

Despite herself, a smile crept onto the Savage Nymph's face. "Hell yes!"

Xion cheered and pumped her arm, before running off out the side of the mirror. Her obvious enthusiasm proved infectious and Larxene began humming a little tune as she stepped out from her bathroom. Demyx and Zexion were huddled over on the other side of the room, where Demyx was trying to flip over the pages in a book while barely touching the paper.

"Come on, time to head out." Larxene ordered, slipping the makeshift sling over her shoulder.

The two of them looked up from the table and respectively hovered and hopped over. "So you think we're finally prepared?" Zexion asked.

"I've got it all figured out." Larxene answered, scooping Demyx up and sliding him into the sheath. "This time we just don't do it one-on-one. I don't know what kind of honor system you guys used before, but this time we do it right."

"… You fought him alone as well…" Zexion muttered as she pulled open the door and marched out of the room, dragging him along in her wake.

* * *

"Okay, this isn't fair." Xigbar complained, throwing his hand down. "We finally get a game going without that 'pro' involved, and I still can't win! I thought we agreed this would be a no-powers game."

"Just because I'm in my element doesn't mean I'm using it, kupo!" Poxuk piped, scooping up the pile of chips and pushing it to his end of the table. "I would think you'd have gotten used to losing to me by now, kupo!"

"Not if we have anything to say about it. Eh, big guy?" Axel joked, slapping Lexeaus on the arm. Lexeaus, by dint of having the best poker face _ever_, had the largest pile of chips on the table after Poxuk. He grunted and lifted his mug to drink, but chocked on it and slammed it back down on the table in surprise.

Xion's impatient face wavered up from the liquid's surface. "Come on guys. Larxene says it's finally time to get going!"

"Already?" Axel grinned, pushing back from his chair and standing up. "We'll be right up."

"Actually, could one of you go to Vexen for me?" Xion asked as she slipped from the cup. "He's removed most of the glass from his lab for some reason…"

"I'm on it." Xigbar sighed, slipped the remainder of his chips into his pocket and stretching. "I bet you can't wait to get going, former flame boy. Of course, Xion might stop hanging around you anymore once…"

Axel moved faster than any of the others thought possible and grabbed both sides of Xigbar's collar. He lifted the sharpshooter easily into the air and drew him close so that their eyes were nearly touching.

"Don't think I've forgotten what you did to Xion." Axel growled, glaring hard enough to set them aflame. "Nor have I forgotten what you were like before. I'm not going to tolerate any more of that after today."

Xigbar looked taken aback for a moment, but recovered and grinned savagely back. "And what do you plan to do about it, fire-be-gone? You can't even catch me." Space swirled and left Axel holding empty air.

But not just empty air. Axel blinked in surprise at the little charred pieces of ash in his right palm which had recently been the king and jack of spades.

* * *

Vexen looked up and Xigbar warped into the room. "Let me guess. Our illustrious leader is prepared to mobilize."

"Got it on the nose." Xigbar whistled, ducking beneath a handing pipe and looking about. "How's things coming along down here, anyway?"

"Progress takes time to grow." Marluxia said smoothly, not looking up from the read outs before him. He tapped a few keys into the pad before him and the machine blinked through its program.

A large tank, made from non-reflecting material, took up most of the lab's floor. In response to Marluxia's input, a small grate along the inner wall ground open and a couple of heartless spilled out into the tank. They blinked and tried to stand up but were almost immediately picked up by the wind and dashed against the walls time and time again. After a few moments they dissolved into darkness and spiraled through the air to the center of the tank, where Xaldin floated on a cushion of wind.

Vexen watched with rapt attention as the liquid shade was absorbed and then quickly skimmed through the data flashing across his terminal. "Still no response, though his 'vitals' have been stable for more than a day. What is the piece that we're missing?"

"I have a theory…" Marluxia started. "I've got an emblem heartless, a Soldier, in tank four. Perhaps…"

"Well, at least he's not see-through anymore." Xigbar said, tapping the view panel with his knuckles. "And how's the madman doing?"

"You'd really think that being removed from the surface of the moon would return his facilities, but _no_…" Vexen tapped some final instruction into his terminal before walking over to a cell door in the far wall. "I suppose we'd better stop for the moment and get going."

He rapped on the door and opened it a crack. "Siax? It's time to come out and get some exercise."

A voice drifted out from the open door. "…who…?"

"Siax!" Vexen snapped.

"Who's that?"

"Sia… sigh. Purple, it's time to go."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" Saix said cheerfully, shoving the door open brusquely and striding out. "And where are we off to today, my subjects?"

On the other side of the room, Xigbar pulled on Marluxia's shoulder to hold him up. "You were right, Larxene really does depend on some of us to keep everyone together. Fortunately, I'm indispensible for errands and the like for her now."

"Indeed." Marluxia grinned, patting the pocket where he kept his tracking petals. Xigbar caught the motion and flinched. _You can never have too many reminders. _"I suppose we shouldn't keep our _leader_ waiting for long, right?"

* * *

Larxene froze in the door and stared. For a second it looked like there were two Luxords in the meeting room, but as she blinked the second resolved into a giant playing card with the gambler's likeness impressed on it. Luxord gave the card a spin and it twirled away.

"You're here already?" Larxene asked, looking around the room for anything else out of place. _Nothing is going to take me by surprise today._ "And what was that? I thought I saw…"

"Just talking to myself." Luxord returned, taking his seat and motioning her to take hers at the head of the table. "Best get you game face on. The others are going to be here presently."

The rest of the Organization entered the room in pairs and made their way to their seats. A special mirror had been set up on one of the chairs so Xion could participate. Larxene waited for the last to be seated before slamming her palms on the table and grabbing everyone's attention.

"Okay, I'm going to keep this short. The last time any of us tried this, we all ended up dead. So this time, we do it smart. No grand standing, no plots to control him, none of this solo crap. We work like a team, like we've probably never done before. Fast in, fast out, and the drinks are on my tonight. And as an added bonus, we're all getting our revenge at once!"

"Actually, Riku tried to kill me." Lexeaus pointed out.

"Silence!" Larxene shouted, refusing to lose her roll. "We've prepared these last five days so that there will be no mistakes. Now, let's go and complete our thirteen!"


	14. XIII

XIII

"Picnic's ready!" Kairi called, standing up and brushing loose sand from her skirt. "Come on out of the water to eat!"

_Riku caught the beach ball and tucked in under his arm. "Last one back to the blanket gets last pick of the sandwiches." he smirked._

"You're on!" Sora cried, and the two of them started running up the surf to their island. The day was beautiful, just cool enough to be pleasant for swimming and just cloudy enough to not be too bright. Tidus and Waka had gotten tickets to an end-of-the-season soccer game and Selphie was busy with some family reunion, so they had the island all to themselves for the day. Knowing exactly where they wanted to be today, the three of them had packed and lunch and hopped onto their boats.

It was the perfect day to end their summer vacation.

Sora laughed as he charged up from the water just slightly ahead of Riku. He turned his head to taunt Riku and his eyes widened in surprise and a little fear. A figure in a black robe with its hood up was standing on the surface of the water about thirty paces out, staring back at him.

He spun in place and dropped into a crouch, summoning up his keyblade with a thought. "Who are you?" he challenged. "One of the Organization?"

Riku skidded to a stop at his side and put a hand on his shoulder to turn him aside. "Sora, look!"

Confused and not wanting to take his eyes off the nobody, Sora glanced quickly at where Riku was pointing. His jaw dropped as he saw that dark corridors were springing up all over the island, depositing more figures with their hoods up. One appeared on the docks between them and their boats, his hands behind his back. Another flipping through a hand full of cards was blocking the door which led to the back of the island. One appeared to be crouching on the upper floor of their hideout, swinging a scythe idle over the edge. Another appeared floating upside-down cross-legged in the air where the water met the beach. Two more appeared on their lookout, one lying on his side and propping his head up on his elbow. The other immediately leapt onto a palm tree and started trying to climb it. A giant of a nobody appeared on the beach just behind Kairi, resting the head of a huge axesword in the sand.

Kairi ran down to the water's edge and the three of them stood backs together. "More members of the Organization?"

"I thought we got rid of these guys." Sora growled, looking side to side for the first on to make a move. "How are they all back?"

"I don't know, but that one is getting closer." Riku said, nodding to the one who was standing on the water.

The figure was walking slowly towards them, measuring each step against the rise and fall of the waves. The water beneath the figures boots glowed a bright electric green and sparks continuously shot down out of them into the water's surface. With a flick of the wrist a fistful of daggers appeared in the figure's left hand as the right hand reached up and pulled a blue… musical note from a sling on its back. The figure stalked up until they were about five paces away and paused dramatically.

With a flick of her head, Larxene threw off her hood and smirked down at them. "It's been a long time, hero."

Sora blinked blankly. "Who the heck are you?"

Whatever Larxene had been about to say died in her mouth as she gaped at him. "Wha… it's Larxene! Don't you remember me?"

"Was she one of the ones you took out?" Sora asked over his shoulder.

"I don't recall her…" Riku said, cocking his head to the side. "Maybe she's new?"

"I kicked your ass three ways to Sunday! Twice!" Larxene fumed, stamping her foot in frustration.

"It's no use." Marluxia called down from above. "He doesn't remember anything from Castle Oblivion, apparently."

"Well, fine! I had a whole thing prepared, but you know what? Forget it." She leveled her daggers at them and grinned savagely. "Attack!"

Xigbar was the first one into action, pulling his arrowguns from nowhere and releasing a cloud of glowing projectiles arching towards the group. Sora turned to place himself between them and Kairi, but Riku called up his blade and leaped into the air. His arm moved in a blur, deflecting each dart he could reach harmlessly away. The remaining darts fell in a sheet all around the pair still on the ground, none coming within a foot of reaching them.

They didn't have any time to relax as Larxene closed the distance in a heartbeat. Sora caught her descending scythe on his keyblade and was sufficiently surprised when it spoke.

"Ow, not so hard!" Demyx whined. "I still remember the last time I was hit by that thing. It still hurts!"

"This really isn't the time!" Larxene snarled, lifting her legs and kicking Sora in the chest. He stumbled back up onto the beach and she followed close on his heels, punching out with her left fist at his stomach. Somehow he managed to bend backwards away from the blow and bring his own weapon to bear.

Meanwhile, Riku touched down from his leap just in time to intercept Lexeaus's charge. The giant bore him on his shoulder back into the surf and shrugged him off, dropping him down into the waist-high water.

Riku splashed to his feet and readied his weapon. "Ready for round two then?"

"Just setting you in place." Lexeaus grumbled, turning slightly and nodding. A white beam lanced out and coated the surface of the water, freezing it into a solid sheet about five inches deep. Riku was caught with his offhand half submerged as the beam jittered wildly around him before tapering off.

Back on the docks, Vexen banged his free hand on the barrel of the rather large and strange gun he was holding. "Blasted thing's freezing up again. And the sight is way off; I didn't even get close to hitting him. I told her I needed more time to work on these…"

"Don't worry. I'll finish it." Lexeaus said, rolling his tomahawk back over his shoulder and lining it up.

"Riku!" Kairi shouted, starting forward. But she was held up short as a pink blade curved around her neck from behind. She froze as the blade nicked her skin, welling up a single drop of blood.

"That's enough of that." Marluxia said smugly, pulling her a little closer. "You're staying put with me, as insurance."

As the giant axe bore whistling down upon him, Riku smiled and lifted his right palm. Dark blue energy coalesced in it and burst forth, driving Lexeaus back up the beach. More and more of the balls slammed into his chest until he smashed into the stonework before the waterfall, draping backwards over it and trying to catch his breath.

Riku jabbed his keyblade into the ice savagely, splintering it and allowing him to wade free of its grasp. He started to churn up the surf, but froze as Kairi yelped in pain.

"Not one step closer!" he commanded, digging his blade a little deeper into her throat. "Now, just throw down your sword and I'll let her go…"

"I'm not as easily captured as I once was!" Kairi declared, giving Riku a tight smile and tilting her head back just slightly. A bright shining light shot up from her right hand and suddenly Destiny Place, her keyblade, was pressed against the scythe at her neck. She shoved it away, causing Marluxia to stumble forward, and brought her left hand down in a sweeping motion. Light blossomed in that hand as well and Oathkeeper materialized, slamming into Marluxia as Kairi continued her spin. The assassin was thrown up and into the air, losing grip on his weapon as he fell back into the waves with a splash.

Kairi spun the two blades around her hands a few times before snapping them tip to tip above her head and dropping into a fighting stance. She charged forward as he rose to his feet, summoning his scythe back into his grasp. He turned in a tight circle to build up speed and slashed just high of the waterline, sending a wave of pink force burning though the air towards her. Kairi held her blades defensively, but suddenly Riku appeared in front of her and held out his arms. A wall of clear, hexagonal blocks appeared just in time to intercept the blast in a small hurricane of pinks winds and petals.

As soon as the blast diminished, Kairi hopped onto Riku's shoulder and pushed off it, descending in a double slash at the diminutive nobody. Marluxia surprised her by slamming his scythe into the soft ground behind him, swinging off it and throwing himself into the air above her. He held out his hand and Xigbar grabbed it as he sped past, spinning and flinging Marluxia to land gracefully on the roof of their tree house. Xigbar continued his spin and wound up on his back in the air, holding his guns over and behind his head and letting loose a stream of missiles that drove Riku to his knees.

Meanwhile, Sora and Larxene were trading blows faster than most of the others could follow. Sora's swings were wide and wild but powerful, whereas Larxene's jabs, though faster, had a hard time cutting though his reach. She'd tried to pin him down more than once with a point-blank blast of lightning, but he always seemed to anticipate the magic and dove into a roll to avoid it.

"Anytime you all want, just go ahead!" She screamed in annoyance, battering Demyx again and again against the nearly impenetrable steel defense.

"Just waiting for the right time." Luxord said casually, leaning back in an almost bored fashion against the stone wall and snapping his fingers. A card appeared from beneath the sand under the combatants' feet, showing a clock face that wound slower and slower to a stop. Their limbs crawled though the air as if through a thick soup as the slow time field caught them in its spell. Luxord picked himself up and started whistling a jaunty tune as he approached the gradually fighting pair, flipping his mace around in his palm.

But before he could reach them a stream of fire lanced into the sand between him and the combatants. The flames melted the sand into glass as it curved onto the two slowed fighters, setting them and more importantly the playing card they were standing on aflame. Time returned to normal for them as they fell back, slapping at the flames to put them out.

"I do hope you aren't planning on _joining _his side, Axel…" Larxene snarled, breaking Demyx's head over her shoulder and dousing the remaining flames clinging to her cloak. Across the way, Axel leaped down from the outer island and strolled up the beach. The large tank holding the fuel for the flamethrower Vexen had cobbled together for him clanked against his back as he cautiously approached.

"No," Axel said, lowering his weapon and shouldering another burden off his back. "I just think some else should get he blows in on him first." He set the mirror he had been carrying into the sand and stood back. Xion's reflection peered out from the glass at Sora as he beat out the last of the clinging flames. He swirled around looking for his next opponent and their eyes locked.

"…What?" Sora said, momentarily at a loss for words. "Who… you look like…"

"I'm sorry, Roxas." Xion promised softly. "This won't take long." She pulled her arm back and punched the glass as hard as she could, shattering it instantly in a spray of spider web cracks. The shards blew outward from the frame and for a second the sunlight caught them just right, revealing a tiny reflection of Xion in each of them. Then the sharp pieces of glass picked up speed and shot across the distance between them in a heartbeat.

Sora had his blade up and swinging defensively before the first sliver reached him, but they came in faster than even Xemnas's light bullets had moved. They slashed his clothing and bright red lines of blood rent his skin in a dozen places in the first minute, but the glass shards weren't inexhaustible. Each piece he slashed from the air broke into hundreds of smaller grains which dropped lifelessly away.

Kairi charged up from the water's edge calling out Sora's name, but Axel let lose a stream of fire in a bright wall all along the beach's edge. Kairi flinched back from the flames as a figure stepped through the inferno, flipping his mace idly in one hand. Luxord sped forward and slammed his mace down upon her in an over head chop. Kairi barely got both blades up to catch the blow, but he retracted it almost faster than possible and swung towards her left.

She was barely keeping up with his blows when a very small symbol caught her eye. On his next chop, she countered with a slanted parry that allowed her to glide Oathkeeper down the mace's handle and across the inside of his arm. Luxord leapt back away from the blade, but not before it took off a section of his sleeve and the small playing card that had been affixed to it. The speeding clock on the card wound to a halt as the time magic wore off and Destiny Place came across, tearing the card in two. Kairi leapt at him, but he snapped his fingers and turned sideways, somehow becoming a two-dimensional image on a giant card. The card fell to the sand and floated away, spawning more cards which scattered in every direction and obscured his escape.

"Always fun to watch him fight." Xigbar whistled, idly reclining in the air. He had been firing one gun into the water while reloading the other continuously for several minutes now and decided his should probably check on his target. He held up his barrage and peered into the still waters, at first unable to make out anything. He dropped down closer, thinking that if the boy hadn't been pierced like a porcupine by now then he surely must have drowned.

In a burst of speed which would have done Larxene proud, Riku appeared just above Xigbar's back and slashed down. The force of the blow bowed Xigbar almost in half and drove him down into the surf. Riku dropped into the water and splashed around, but the nobody had vanished in a blurp of bubbles. Nodding to himself, he splashed back towards the shallow water.

Suddenly a handed closed about his ankle and the world inverted. Lexeaus burst out of the ground, riding a pillar of stone out of the sand and dragging Riku along after him. He whipped the boy one, two, three times around the air and launched him across the small bay. Riku collided against the outer island back first and gasped in pain, momentarily unable to think of anything like defense.

The force of the blow held him against the wall for a few seconds and when he started to fall, he was intercepted by Lexeaus. The big guy had charged after his throw and tackled him as he fell, slamming him into the side of the island hard enough to spread cracks through the foundation.

Lexeaus pulled back to view his handiwork and blinked at the clear wall he was pressed against. It took him a moment too long to realize what he was looking at, so he had no immediate defense when Riku dropped the shield and slashed him across the stomach.

Above them, Saix almost lost his grip on the tree. He swung his legs tight around the trunk and regained his grip, starting again to inch his way higher. Unnoticed by him, a small pink petal drifted slowly out of the air and landed on his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" a voice asked in his ear.

"What's that, talking tree?" Saix asked, looking wildly about and clutching the truck tighter. "I'm trying to get to the fruit. With it, I will be able to find me true love!"

Up on the wooden planks of the children's lookout, Marluxia sighed and held his petal a little closer. "No. I mean, why aren't you fighting? You see that guy fighting Number V right below you? You should attack him."

"I don't want to fight. There's no moon, and I'm soooo tired…" Saix slumped dramatically against the tree and his left eye twitched upward to stare at the fruit again.

"Um… hmm. Well, that guy down there? He stole the moon. That's why it's gone. You should…"

"GIVE ME BACK MY MOON!" Saix screamed, launching himself from the tree into the air. He pulled out his claymore in a burst of light and plummeted with all the force he could muster. The screaming nobody missile streaked down and connected solidly… with Lexeaus.

"WHERE'S THE MOON?" Saix screamed, hitting the Silent Hero over and over again with his weapon. "WHERE'S THE DAMN MOON?" Concentrated rings spread out from each of his blows, slamming into Riku and repeatedly bashing him into the stone wall.

"No, that's not what I… well, I suppose I can run with this." Marluxia mused, dropping his petal and settling down into a more comfortable position to watch.

Sora had nearly cleaved every shard of glass from the air when Axel opened fire again. The arc of flames scorched the ground as Sora leapt over it, calling upon his own magic to send a burst of icy crystals slamming the fuel tank. One of the crystals punched a hole in the side of it, spilling out a steady stream of the precious liquid. Axel slapped his hand over the rent in a futile attempt to stem the flow as Sora landed and bore down upon him.

"Alright, time to finish this." Larxene promised, dropping her daggers and holding Demyx before her in both hands. She focused and lightning started streaming from her hands and collecting in his watery body. Soon Demyx was glowing a bright aqua green and discharging tiny bolts of static in all directions.

"I-I-I-I ha-a-at-te th-hi-hi-ss-ss pa-aa-ar-rt." Demyx stuttered as Larxene brought her arms up and swiftly down again. Energy simply exploded out from the quaver in the form of a column of wildly dancing lightning barreling down the beach. Axel dove out of its path just in time, but Sora was caught by the edge of the blast and was quickly lost to sight. The maelstrom continued on its path, suppressing a swath of Axel's fire wall and delving straight into the sea, where it lost stream and dissolved.

Sora coughed and tried to pull himself up from the blackened sand, but a boot pressed into his back and shoved him back down. He slowly turned his head and looked up at Larxene, who pressed her heel a little deeper for emphasis.

"Looks like the end, hero." Larxene taunted, calling her daggers back to her fist with a thought. She cocked her arm and punched down, aiming for the base of his neck. But before she could cover half the distance Destiny Place slammed into her arm and knocked it wide.

Kairi followed close after her thrown keyblade and pressed in wildly, driving Larxene off him with sheer determination. Larxene was momentarily thrown off by her enthusiasm, but quickly regained the upper hand against her inexperienced foe. She punched out twice with her knives, scoring nonlethal but painful hits while she easily deflected the girls' wild swings with her other. Desperate for an opening, Kairi dived forward and managed to grab Demyx by the stem.

Blinding light burst forth between them. Kairi felt her strength starting to ebb, but for some reason she couldn't release her grip. Larxene stumbled backwards out of the glare, pressing her hands to her eyes. The light slowly faded away to reveal Kairi kneeling in the sand, clutching the hand of a familiar nobody. Demyx hesitantly withdrew his hand and brought it up to his face, exploring his features and hair with his fingers.

"Ha. Ha ha! I'm back!" he laughed, patting himself down excitedly. He spun in place and pointed a dramatic finger at Larxene. "I don't know how, but my body's been restored and that means I don't have to listen to you anymore! No more being electrocuted! No more having to endure you're training practice! I'm finally free to do my own thing!"

Demyx threw his hand dramatically into the air and the water responded, swirling around him in a dome as it shot up into his palm. The collected water grew and grew into a huge bubble which started to glow brightly as Demyx laughed maniacally. His laughter was cut short, however, as Sora's keyblade slammed into his neck. Demyx flew sideways through the air, skidding and somersaulting on the ground before slamming head first into the low stone wall. He slumped, unconscious, into the sand.

"Thanks for the help, Kairi!" Sora grinned, nodding her way. Kairi grinned back and the two of them readied themselves to charge Larxene. The Savage Nymph heaved out a few breaths and flung her arms out, calling forth all her daggers and challenging them to make the first move. But all of a sudden the whole area started to grow dimmer and Larxene's arms slacked in surprise. Confused, the two heroes turned to see what was casting the huge shadow.

An enormous wave was bearing down upon the island. As it roared up the beach, Sora had time to spot Xion's reflection in the exact center of the wave, arms thrush forward as she urged the water forth with all her strength. Then the wave crashed down upon them and they were all tossed every which way.

"Oh my, that was an impressive display of power!" Marluxia congratulated, leaning a little over the edge to get a better view of the spillage. He started to lean back but froze in place as he felt a gun barrel press against the back of his head.

"Enjoying the view?" Vexen sneered.

"Immensely." Marluxia replied. "I thought you said that gun was broken."

"I lied." The scientist spat, pressing forward so that Marluxia had to balance precariously over the edge. "Did you really think I would allow myself to be manipulated and blackmailed by one such as you? I will always outrank you, both in power and in intelligence."

"Perhaps," Marluxia smiled, "but while you may know more facts than me, you always seem to forget such obvious details."

"Oh? And what am I forgetting now?" Vexen pressed, but out of the corner of his eye he saw that vines were growing out of the barrel of his weapon. He tried to pull sharply back, but Marluxia's scythe whistled sharply through the air and buried itself in Vexen's side. The small nobody turned around and stood up, pulling the impaled scientist close enough to whisper into his ear.

"A gun is a _distance_ weapon." he whispered. Then he spun and ripped his scythe out, tearing Vexen in two. Both halves fell from the landing in streams of darkness as Marluxia stalked back to the edge. "I suppose I'd better get started."

Coughing and sputtering, Larxene dragged herself out of the water and glared daggers at her foes. "Ready to throw in the towel, hero?"

"Not even close!" Sora returned, hopping to his feet in an impressive display of resilience.

"Well, than I suppose I'd better up the stakes." She smiled and held out her hand. "Xion, dear, I seem to be missing a weapon."

Sora stared at her in confusion, but movement caught out of the corner of his eye cause him to look down and gasp. Xion was reflected in the metal of his keyblade and as he watched she appeared to grasp the edges of it and pull. The sword was jerked out of his hand and sent spinning through the air, falling almost perfectly into Larxene's waiting hands. She gave the blade a few practice swings before grinning evilly at him over the edge of the blade.

"That's… that's not going to work!" Sora declared, stretching his arm out for the sword and concentrating. Nothing happened and Sora's mouth dropped in astonishment.

"You're not the only one who knows how to wield a keyblade." Xion stated, holding her arms steady on the edges of the reflection, though beads of perspiration dotted her brow. Sora started forward, but a tap on his shoulder turned him around.

"Surprise!" Xigbar shouted, unleasing a large blue projectile from his arrowguns point blank into Sora's stomach. The beam propelled Sora backwards across the beach and into the side of the storehouse, splintering the wood before rebounding off in a random direction. Sora groaned and rolled over onto his side to see Luxord standing over him.

"Sorry, mate." Luxord apologized, raising his mace above his head. "But this looks like checkmate." But before he could swing a spinning blade carved though the air and across his unprotected side. Marluxia's scythe buried itself up to the hilt into the ground next to Sora's hand and immediately dissolved into petals. Luxord lurched back, pressing his hands to his side and cursing.

Up above, Marluxia looked down on them and shrugged. "Oops. Looks like I missed."

"What?" Larxene screamed, threatening him with the keyblade. "Seriously? Are you seriously doing this _now_ of all times?"

"You should never have tried to exclude me, my former partner. I'm the…" Larxene's daggered punched into his chest, but Marluxia laughed and continued as he began dissolving. "You're so predictable. You assumed… I was the real Marluxia. But don't worry… I'm on my way… right… now…"

As the clone finished dissolving away, a dark corridor opened at the very top of the island. The real Marluxia stepped out and threw his burden as far away as he could. Xaldin's body, freed from its container, floated to a rest above their heads and immediately started twisting the air around him. In no time at all a veritable hurricane was raging across the island, centered around the floating nobody.

Sand arched in wave after wave, trees were uprooted, and the lovingly nailed together buildings and walkways started to tear apart. Xigbar and Luxord both used their powers to vanish from sight as the storm began. Sora, Kairi, Axel, and Larxene weren't as lucky and were picked up by the winds.

In the bay, Saix took one look at the expanding storm and crowed. "Wowee, it looks dangerous around here. We need to go somewhere safer now, mister statue man. _TO THE MOOOOOOOOON!_"

"What? No!" Lexeaus blearily shouted, but Saix grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet with surprising strength. Light and darkness swirled about the two of them and they were gone.

Sora tumbled over and over for a few minutes before managing to orient himself in the storm. A boulder, ripped from the island by the gale force winds, bore down on him from the side. He grabbed the boulder and clung on for dear life, peering around the maelstrom for any sign of Kairi. All he could make out was the swirling mess, and before he could look further Larxene slammed straight into his boulder from below, cleaving it in two with his keyblade. Sora lost his grip and plummeted again at the mercy of the winds.

Kairi had managed to hook onto a flying palm tree and finally saw Sora just as he was blasted from his perch. "No!" she shouted, trying desperately to think of something she could do. She couldn't concentrate enough in the storm to return Destiny Place to her hand and she had never learned how to cast spells like the others. Before she could think of anything else, the tree shuddered as Axel hooked the barrel of his ruined flamethrower around the roots. Reaching around for a better grip, he started working his way up the tree towards the girl.

Out in the water, Riku stumbled wearily to his feet and looked around for his missing opponents. He lost his footing and barely caught himself on the rockface, panting heavily and favoring his left leg. Looking up he stared in confusion at a giant sphere of sand-and-debris-filled cyclone raging over the island not twenty feet away. His hair blew wildly about his face as he peered closer into it, making out the battered forms of his friends.

His wounds momentarily forgotten, Riku charged up the beach and leapt up into the storm. The winds picked and pulled at him, but he controlled his angle by aiming for crates, stones, and other large pieces of wreckage and rebounding off them. After several of such leaps he came up alongside Larxene, who was also used the terrain to propel herself where she wanted. Their blades locked for a second and they shoved off in opposite directions, Larxene hooking a plank of wood and throwing herself in line for another pass with Sora.

"Sora, catch!" Riku shouted, throwing his keyblade to his friend. Sora spun over and reached out the catch the weapon, but a twist in space put Xigbar between them.

"Let's see how far I have to take this before you can't bring it back!" Xigbar crowed, catching the sword and vanishing. Before Sora could shout out in denial, Larxene slammed into him and smashed the keyblade into his side. Sora tried to wrestle his weapon back but she twisted away from him, burying a dagger into his leg before pushing off into the storm.

The angle of her descent had her flying directly at Riku. The boy shot out a stream of dark energy blasts at her, but the few that weren't blown wildly off course by the storm she easily deflected with her stolen blade. Cackling, she closed the distance and was about to strike when a flash of silver interposed itself between them.

It was Oathkeeper, and Riku snatched it from the air just in time to catch the descending blade. He twisted beneath her grip while she was still reeling in surprise and slashed through her cloak at her chest. Larxene gasped and disengaged, pulling the fabric back together with her free hand.

"Sora!" Riku shouted, spinning and launching Oathkeeper into the air. Sora swooped past and caught the blade, turning around just in time to block a large wave of pink force that was coming upon him from behind. Blocking the attack almost knocked him right out of the storm, but he hooked a ripped off section of wall with the key and pulled himself back into the fight.

"I missed again." Marluxia muttered to himself, pulling back his arm in preparation of launching another attack into the whirlwind. _Like shooting fish in a barrel,_ he mused and he swung with all his might, sending another destructive wave into the mix. But as he recovered his balance, giant cards sprang up from the ground and sealed him in on all sides. Gripping his scythe closer, Marluxia readied himself for the next step in this unexpected development.

After throwing her second keyblade, Kairi had climbed up to the top leaves of her tree and hung on for dear life as Axel slowly made his way up towards her. But looking up, she saw the lancing wave of Marluxia's last attack bearing down on them and let go of the tree. Axel blinked in confusion as she was pulled past him by the wind, giving him a jolly wave as she passed by. Then the wave of energy smashed the tree into splinters and he was thrown straight out of the storm to crash headlong into the now exposed stone wall of the island.

Kairi tucked her arms and legs tight against her body and dived straight down, aiming for a familiar shape spinning around the bottom of the storm. In a flash of space Xigbar reappeared and was almost knocked out as she shot past just inches from his head. He grunted and took aim at her descending form, launching a large blue beam after her. The beam closed in rapidly, coming right up to the soles of her feet as she finally reached her target.

She grabbed Destiny Place by the hilt and spun, knocking the blue projectile harmlessly in another direction. It curved and Riku soared into its path, forming a shield and rebounding the beam back across the storm. Sora readied his strike as he came into line and struck the beam for a third time, shooting it back down at its caster. Xigbar took the blast square on his back and he was sent spinning chaotically away.

The three of them soon got a pattern going, tossing the two blades between them with a coordination that almost seemed planned. Larxene no sooner blocked an attack from one when another would whistle past behind her, tearing at her back. She had almost no time to react to their whirling attacks. Every now and then one of them would swoop behind a boulder or piece of wooden wall and slamming it with whatever key they had at the time, sending it careening into her.

_I've got to turn this around now!_ Larxene swung wildly about in all directions, trying to find some opening to exploit, when sudden inspiration struck. She held out her hand and surrounded herself on a field of lightning to deter any immediate attacks and started gathering energy. When she had collected almost as much as she could hold at once she released it in a huge bolt directly above her. The bolt screamed as it tore into Xaldin, ripping his unconscious form apart and sending streams of darkness flying in all directions.

The effect on the storm was immediate. The winds lost all power behind them and simply stopped. Everything, from the combatants to the hunks of island to the sheen of sand that had obscured most of the fight, hung in the air for a few moments as if suspended in water. And then they started to fall. Kairi was flung out over the water, skipping twice before flopping beneath the waved. Riku and Larxene each hit the top of the island at different ends, bounding down the ragged cliffside several times before she got caught in a tree and he fell out of sight on the islands other side. Sora shot straight down into the sands and pulled up a furrow twelve feet long in the beach before grinding to a halt. All around them debris pelted the island causing more devastation.

Meanwhile, Axel was slowly making his way to his feet. "No… it can't end like this…" He looked around at the desolation raining down around him and down at the ruined flamethrower. "It can't end like this. I can't be this powerless… Roxas…" Smoke started trailing up from the edges of his cloak.

"I AM THE BEST ALIVE AT SETTING THING ON FIRE!" Axel screamed and burst into flames. Fire crackled around his frame in a protective halo, playing along his fingertips and curling through his hair. He laughed as he felt whatever had been keeping his power at bay cinder away and he turned around to find some target to unleash his fury upon.

Xigbar fell out of the sky directly on top of Axel. The two of them fell back in a heap on top of Axel's discarded flamethrower, and a small tongue of flame hopped off his shoulder and in through the hole in the fuel tank. The ensuing fireball blew a crater into the side of the island and set every remaining tree and plank of wood in the area alight.

Sora crawled to his feet and blinked the grit from his eyes. His island, his precious island, was in ruin. He grimaced in anger, in defiance, _in denial_, and surged to his feet despite his injuries. He spotted his keyblade lying not far away on the beach where Larxene had lost her grip on it in the fall. He called it to his hand with a thought and stalked towards the treeline, where Larxene was struggling to her feet amidst the burning leaves.

"You've destroyed everything!" he accused, thrusting his blade forward and shooting a ball of fire out of its tip. The magic missile connected with her knee, driving her off balance and into the ground.

"I could say the same for you." Larxene returned, climbing back up to her feet. "This is the second time you've scattered my Organization."

"Don't even try!" Sora shouted, launching another magic attack as he stalked closer, this one she dodged. "You came here! Attacked us! And now you've lost!"

Larxene smirked. "After all I've been through, you think I haven't learned anything? Lesson one, hero… always leave a trick in reserve for when things go bad."

She snapped her fingers and Zexion dropped the illusion shielding him from sight. He thrust his hands dramatically into the air and light exploded away from him, blinding in its brilliance. Sora clamped his free hand over his eyes, but clutched his keyblade all the tighter in determination. He struggled forward one trying step after another closer to his enemy.

Kairi splashed up from the surf and blinked the shine from her eyes. She turned and started for the shore, immediately spotting Sora on the beach. He was hunched over as if struggling against an unseen wind. In front of him stood two figures, one of which was thrusting his hands forward and concentrating. And the other…

Kairi screamed in horror as Larxene sprinted forward and stabbed Sora in the chest. He crumpled around her daggers and slumped forward, falling face first into the sand. Kairi surged up the beach, blinking tears from her eyes and calling both her weapons to her hands. She covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye, slashing her weapons crosswise through Larxene as she rushed past. She held her pose for a second as Larxene collapsed behind her onto her knees.

As Kairi turned to check on Sora's injuries, Zexion allowed the illusion to drop a little. Larxene's form flowed away like water to reveal Sora, confusion in his eyes as he clutched his sides with his hands. Kairi dropped her weapons and clamped her hands over her mouth, horrorstruck at what she had done. She dropped to her knees next to him as the Sora she had seen got stabbed rose from his crouch unnoticed and raised his weapon above to strike.

"Look out!" Riku yelled, leaping down from above and having been shielded from the initial illusion by landing on the other side of the island. He launched a stream of dark energy blasts from his palm into the fake Sora, blasting him away from the others. The illusion gave away to show Zexion sprawled unconscious in the air, a look of confusion still splayed on his face.

"No!" Larxene screamed, lancing a burst of lightning at the descending boy. Riku jerked and spasmed in the air before collapsing unconscious into the rubble of the waterfall's pool. Through an act of pure will Sora rose to his feet and used the distraction to charge forward. He stabbed his keyblade into the small of her back and released the swords' innate powers.

Larxene arched backwards over the blade as a thin beam of pure white light shot out of tip point blank into her back and continued out the other side. Though the blast left no physical wound, she felt like her very soul were being rent apart by the pain. Her knives fell from her numb fingers as she slumped to the ground, trying vainly to stay conscious while words of denial fell silent from her lips. There was some commotion going on around her that she could only barely perceive, and the last thing she was aware of before darkness rose up to claim her was a pair of hands closing upon her shoulders.

* * *

Larxene's return to consciousness, while unexpected, didn't come as much of a surprise. _Not the first time I've come back from the dead._ She blinked her eyes wearily and looked around at where she was now. She was tucked into a stiff white bed and wiggling her arms revealed that they were secured in bands to the frame at her side. Starkly white light beamed down from the florescent ceiling lights and a small tray on a table to her left side was covered with a variety of medical equipment.

"Right on time." Luxord said brightly, putting a bookmark into his paperback and sitting up a little straighter in his chair at her bedside. "We have some things to go over, so lets get all our cards out on the table."

"Where… am I…?" Larxene asked, startled by how weak she sounded.

Luxord smiled and pointed with his book at the room around them. "The hospital, of course. As a matter of fact, the same one that treated Xigbar a few months ago. That's how they were able to patch you up after the skirmish a few days ago."

"What… happened…" she tried, wiggling her left wrist to try and get it out of the bonds. _Why am I tied down?_

"It was a complete failure. The match was all but over once you were eliminated. I managed to collect most of us and brought everyone here to recover. You've been out for nearly three days, and in your absence… well…"

As if on cue, Axel walked into the room and stood at reluctant attention at the bedside. He glanced down at Larxene and she noticed that there was a black tattoo in the shape of a spade over his left eye. He gave her a conspiratorial smile and turned back to Luxord.

"Zexion's reported back. The cards you imprinted him and Xion upon have finally reached Destiny Island's moon. They are starting the search for numbers V and VII."

"Excellent." Luxord slipped his book into an inner pocket and stood up. "You see, Larxene, every poker player knows that putting all your chips in the pot is no guarantee of victory. And after I dealt with Marluxia, I was the only one with chips left."

"Like I would _ever-_" Larxene growled, rising up as high as she could before a blinding pain sizzled along the left side of her face. She contorted back in pain and gasped weakly as it faded slowly away.

"You didn't think I was just idly biding my time while everyone was down, did you?" Luxord placed a small mirror on the side of her bed and walked toward the door, Axel following in his heels. "I was considering diamond for you, but this was just a bit to ironic to miss. Get well."

Larxene didn't pay too much attention to him leaving. She was too engrossed staring in horror at her reflection in the mirror. There was a tattoo of a bright red heart over her left eye.

* * *

"I have some business to take care of." Luxord said as he left Larxene's room. "Don't worry, I expect you'll find me downstairs readying the ship for travel. You'd best hurry to catch me."

"… If you say so." Axel answered, eyeing him oddly and walking away towards the stairs.

Luxord smiled as he watched him go and cocked his head to the side. "I think it's time for a cup of tea." He held out his hand and opened up a portal, but he paused and turned back to the table along the side of the hall. He picked up a newspaper from the pile and tucked it under his arm. _Always good to keep up on current events…_

_AN - Well, that's the end of my story. I hope you all enjoyed the ride as much as I did. And I wanted to apologize one last time for the wait on these last few chapters, I wanted to give this story the ending it deserved. I will be returning to this universe I've created with some one-shots under the series title of "The Lost Year", so keep and eye on my channel if you want to read more._

_Thank you for taking the time to read my work and, as always, if there's any series you want me to add my personal touch to, just drop me a line. Thanks for reading!_


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